Tinkie and I bellied up to the bar at the roadhouse and I ordered Jack Daniel’s on the rocks. Tinkie opted for the same. Best to keep the drink orders easy and simple. We’d left the pups and cat in the car, snuggled into a warm comforter. We wouldn’t be long in Odell’s, but we needed to meet with Cece.
Tinkie was what a lot of men considered “fun sized” because she was petite, so I kept a wary eye out for anyone who might give us trouble. Normally no one had an interest in us, but we were strangers in this bar, and it was a lively place with pool tables, loud music on the juke-box, and more single men than women. We sipped our drinks and huddled together, talking about the case.
“Where did you go, Sarah Booth?” Tinkie asked. “You acted like you were lost.”
How I wanted to tell her about Jitty and Uncle Drosselmeyer. But I couldn’t. Jitty’s lecture on believing in my own abilities had given me renewed hope that I desperately wanted to share with Tinkie, but how to explain that I was haunted by a woman dead for one hundred and fifty years who’d appeared as a fictional character from a Russian ballet. It was impossible to explain. So I told a half truth. “I thought I heard something in the woods and I got turned around.”
“That strip of woods is only about forty yards wide.” Tinkie didn’t believe a word of what I was saying.
I shrugged. “I don’t know how it happened. I’m just glad we’re back in civilization.”
“That’s a questionable assertion.” Tinkie tucked in closer to me as a big guy stopped at her elbow.
“Care to dance, ma’am?” he asked.
I nudged her. “Go on and dance. It’ll help pass the time.”
She cast a murderous glare at me and headed to the dance floor. It was a quick two-step and the man was a fine dancer. In a moment, Tinkie’s reservations had blown out the front door and she was having the time of her life. Any woman knows a strong lead makes dancing fun. This guy was good at leading and Tinkie was light on her feet. He had her spinning, whirling, and moving from the dancer’s frame to side-by-side and back. They were fun to watch.
“Ma’am, would you like to dance?” I looked up to find a green-eyed cowboy holding out his hand.
“Sure. I’m not as good a dancer as my friend, but I do like to dance.”
We hit the floor and in a moment the fast pace of the song had all of my concentration on not stomping his feet. At the end of the tune, our partners returned us to the bar with a gentlemanly “thank you.”
We danced three songs before the door of the bar swung open and a face I recognized entered the establishment. Two faces. Curtis and Matilda Bromley took one look at us and froze like ’possums in the headlights of a car. It wasn’t just that they hadn’t expected to see us—it was something else. They reeked of guilt.
I waved them over to the bar. “Let’s get a table,” I said, ignoring the obvious signs that they preferred not to talk to us.
Tinkie cleared up our bar tab as we found a table in a corner. “This is perfect. We can talk. My partner and I have some questions.” Suddenly the Bromleys were not the innocent good Samaritans that I’d first thought them to be. They’d found Eve’s purse and called Cece—what I’d assumed to be an act of compassion. Now I had a far darker motivation assigned to their actions.
“What are you doing at Odell’s?” Curtis asked, trying not to make it sound accusatory and failing completely.
“Oh, we’re looking for someone,” I said.
“Yeah, that Falcon girl,” Matilda said. “We haven’t seen her.”
“Have you seen Dara Peterson?” Tinkie asked, a quick thrust of her interrogation skills.
“Wh-who?” Matilda asked. The color left her face.
“We know all about it,” I said. “In fact, we were just about to call the law.”
“For what?” Curtis quickly grew belligerent. “We haven’t done anything wrong except try to keep Ms. Falcon from worrying about her relative.”
“Where is Eve?” I asked.
“If I knew that, I’d take you there.” Matilda kept her gaze leveled at mine. “I mean it. I don’t know where she is.”
“But you do know something.” It wasn’t a question.
“She was alive when we saw her,” Matilda said. “We should have just come out and said it instead of planting the purse and trying to pretend we didn’t know. She was perfectly fine. She got in the boat and went upriver.”
“Who was she with?” Tinkie almost jumped across the table.
“I didn’t know the people. Honestly.” Matilda was still holding my gaze.
“Did you speak to her?” I asked.
She nodded. “She was very pregnant and I didn’t think it was a good idea for her to be getting into a small boat. I asked her if she needed help and she said no, she was fine. There was nothing else I could do. She dropped that purse and it wasn’t an accident. I did what I thought she wanted—got in touch with her kin.”
“You can tell us who has her.” Tinkie cut to the chase. “If anything happens to her or that baby, you’re going to be charged as an accessory.”
For the first time, Matilda’s gaze faltered, and my heart sank. Did she know that something terrible had already happened to Eve? She’d never tell me, no matter how long I questioned her. “All we want is to find Eve and know she’s safe.”
“I don’t know where she is, but I do believe she’s safe.” Matilda punched Curtis on the shoulder when he tried to stop her from speaking. “They know we know.” She turned back to me. “She’s okay. Pay the money and get this over with.”
“Has she had the baby? It’s due tomorrow.” Tinkie grasped Matilda’s hand. “Just tell us.”
“No. She hasn’t delivered and she isn’t in labor. But she wants to get back to her life. Just pay the ransom and put an end to it.”
“Cece has the money,” I said. “We’re waiting for instructions to make the drop. If you want to wait here, Cece is on the way. She can bring the money right now. We just want this to be over.” I wondered how deep they were in this.
“We aren’t touching any money,” Curtis said. “None. We don’t have anything to do with any of this. We only wanted to try to let you know Eve was safe. We wanted to do a good thing and now you’re threatening us.”
“A good thing would have been to send Eve home. You can’t hold a woman hostage for a ransom and call it a good thing.” I spoke as calmly as I could.
“You call it what you want to call it.” Matilda’s eyes narrowed. “I call it doing a good deed. Now we’re leaving, unless you want to call the police, and I don’t think you want to do that.”
There was a clear warning in her words. “No, we aren’t calling the law,” Tinkie said sharply. “We won’t jeopardize Eve or her baby. But if anything happens to either of them, understand that I’ll be looking for you. And I will find you.”
“When this is over, you can stop by and apologize,” Matilda said stiffly. “Let’s go, Curtis.” They both stood up and walked out the door and into the night.
“We should stop them,” I said, but I didn’t make a move.
“We could follow them. See if they lead us to Eve.”
But we both knew they were smarter than that. We’d made our decision when we let them leave the bar without calling Coleman. They would never lead us to Eve. This was a dead end—except that we now knew Eve was alive and well.
The bar door opened and Cece came in, searching the dimly lit interior until she saw us in the corner. She signaled a waitress as she headed to join us. When she sat down, the lighting emphasized the furrow between her eyebrows. She looked tired and unhappy.
“We have reason to believe Eve is perfectly fine,” Tinkie said.
“What?” Cece almost stood up, but I signaled her back into her chair. “How do you know? What did you find?”
“Hold your horses, Cece.” Tinkie put a hand on her hand. “The waitress is here for our order. We’d like another round, and she’ll have a tequila and grapefruit juice.” Cece looked like tequila was exactly what she needed.
When we were alone again, we leaned in closer so we could whisper. Tinkie told Cece all about our meeting with the Bromleys and what we’d learned.
“You should have detained them.” Cece glared at us.
“Honey, they weren’t going to tell us anything, and I truly believe they don’t know where Eve is. They do know she’s okay.”
“How do they know that?” Cece asked.
“Because I believe they know the kidnapper,” Tinkie said. We’d come to the exact same conclusion. “Eve is with someone they know and care about. And to be honest, Tinkie, if we’d detained the Bromleys, it could have gone badly for Eve. It was clear to me they knew about the threat of going to the police. They pretty much dared us to call the law. We could have forced them to stay here, but…”
“No, you did the right thing.” Cece’s entire body slumped. “I’m not second-guessing you. It’s just that I want her back so much. I have such guilt that I let her slip out of my life and I didn’t fight to keep her in it.”
I remembered when Cece was going through her surgeries and the changes that had taken such courage. She’d been part of the Delta elite families and heir apparent to the Falcon land and money. When she’d decided to transition, she’d lost everything, including her family. “You had all you could manage just to get through each day, Cece. You can’t blame yourself for this.”
“But I do.”
There it was, the guilt we all shouldered even when we shouldn’t.
“Cece Dee Falcon, you stop this right now.” Tinkie was hot under the collar. Her face was beet red, and she was almost hyperventilating she was so angry. “Eve made her choices. She was in a bad place with those scoundrels she calls her parents. They’re about as loving as cornered honey badgers. But that wasn’t your fault. And it wasn’t Eve’s fault that she lost touch with you because her parents disapproved. It’s just a fact. And she moved on with her life the best she could—just as you did. No one is to blame. The important thing is that we are all here, right this minute, doing everything we can to see that Eve and her baby are safe. That’s the only thing that matters. The past is done and gone.”
I wanted to applaud, but I settled for holding up my glass for a toast. I took a swallow of the fresh drink and stopped. “This is tea,” I said. “It isn’t Jack.”
“I know,” Tinkie said calmly, reaching over and taking it from my hand. “I’m driving, remember? I’ve been in enough hot water with Oscar. If he has a clue I’m drinking and driving he’ll have a conniption fit.”
I couldn’t argue with her logic, so I kept my lip zipped and took a long swallow of Jack from my actual glass that burned nicely going down. I was glad Tinkie was a responsible driver. “Cece, you had some news,” I said. “Spill it?”
She looked so miserable, I wondered what could have gone so wrong.
“I got the ransom call. They want me to deliver the goods tomorrow at ten o’clock in the evening.”
* * *
“Coleman, Oscar, and Harold will all be busy at the church Christmas pageant,” Tinkie reminded us and gave Cece a big smile. “See, it’s going to work out. We’ll deliver the money and get Eve and go straight to the hospital. I’ll have Doc on call for us.”
Doc always had our physical health in the forefront, but I doubted he would be so agreeable to being manipulated. I blew out a breath of air. “Where’s the drop?” I asked.
“Upriver from here,” Cece said. “I used Google Earth to find it and it’s pretty isolated. We won’t be able to pull any tricks. It’s a narrow road in and only one way out.”
“Which shows the kidnappers know this area like the back of their hands. They’ll have the advantage. What we have in our favor is that if we get Eve back we don’t care about the money,” Tinkie said. “They can have it. We just want her and the baby to be okay.”
“It’s a lot of money.” Cece was clearly upset. “A lot. How will I ever repay Oscar?”
“Some things aren’t worth worrying about right now, so let’s not worry. Will they call you with instructions tomorrow?”
Cece nodded slowly. “How can I be sure Eve is even still alive? I know to ask for proof of life, but what would that be?”
“A photo holding today’s paper,” I suggested. “Or her saying something that happened in the news this morning on the phone. Or if they let you talk to her, have her answer a question only she would know the answer to. They couldn’t fake that. She’d have to be alive.”
“She is alive,” Tinkie said with such certainty. “Look, the Bromleys went to a lot of trouble to try to alleviate your worries. The whole purse thing was a ruse to let you know she was still alive. I know this may sound radical, but they seemed to be following a good impulse. They didn’t have to call you about the purse, but they did, to let you know Eve was okay.”
What she said was true, but assigning noble motives to kidnapping conspirators seemed like a risky business. Those who abducted people for ransom were not good people. The goal here, though, was to reassure Cece. “Tinkie could very well be right. So the money drop is tomorrow. How are we going to manage that without alerting Oscar, Coleman, and Harold? The only reason they’re playing a part in the production is because we pushed them into it and insisted. If we aren’t at the church for the Christmas pageant, they’re going to know we’re up to something.”
“Good point,” Tinkie said. “But we can’t let Cece make the drop by herself.”
That was out of the question. “Anyone have a plan?” I asked.