Chapter 3

I stared at Marie Catlett for a full minute. I’m sure my mouth was open. I had never heard anything so stupid and so cold-blooded in my life. Playing finders-keepers with kidnappers could be a dangerous game.

“Let’s get over there.” I went for my jacket. “Maybe—hopefully—the kidnappers called again, and somebody went suddenly sane and talked to them and to Zoe, or maybe even called the cops.”

Fargo wanted to go with me and I hated to leave him home alone for God knows how long, so I let him come along. If Marie found this strange, she kept her mouth shut about it.

In the car, she kept clearing her throat as if she wanted to say something. Finally, I asked her if the dog was bothering her.

He was sulking in the backseat with his head stuck between the two front seats, and she turned to pat his head. “Heavens, no. He’s a lovely boy. No, I’m just trying to get up the courage to tell you that after my pleas, and those added by Rob and Marvin, Reed finally agreed we should do something about this situation, and that ‘something’ is to retain you to contact some of Zoe’s friends and casually ask if any of them know her whereabouts. Perhaps I should have told you sooner. I didn’t have the nerve.”

I guess it was a good thing we were already turning into Reed’s driveway at that moment. Otherwise, I would simply have circled the block and gone home and turned the TV on to cartoons or old western movies. Why not? I seemed to be in the middle of a combination of the two.

We parked under the carport and went in through the kitchen to avoid the rain, which had picked up some, making me wonder fleetingly if Zoe was in a warm, dry spot or someplace deliberately uncomfortable. I thought it sad that Zoe seemed to be not between a rock and a hard place, but a rock and the vacuum that should have been her family.

We entered the house and Fargo tracked daintily across the pristine white and gold kitchen tiles, leaving a rather artistic trail until we reached the dining room, where his paw prints didn’t show on what was probably a very expensive oriental rug. In that room, we found the entire family gathered silently around the table with coffee cups and crumbled pastries spread carelessly here and there. A real breakfast sat untouched on the sideboard, looking cold and soggy with the warmer lights turned off under the servers.

“Anything new turn up?” Marie asked quickly.

I thought I could guess that answer from the universal gloomy expressions. Merrilou answered, and I had forgotten about the accent. “No. Not a single threatenin’ cawl. But this mus’ be yoah deah friend, Alex.” She rose and offered her hand, cool and firm, as she continued her tungsten magnolia welcome, which I won’t even try to duplicate. She introduced me to the family and then poured coffee for me and set a plate of pastries within easy reach. I introduced Fargo, and the two boys got up to pet him. Merrilou smiled at him, and Reed looked underwhelmed.

“If you’d like a hot breakfast. It would be no trouble at all . . .” She looked at me questioningly.

“No, thanks, this is fine.” I sipped the first-rate coffee and wondered who was going to be the first to get the conversation going. It was, of course, Marie.

She announced, “Everyone, Alex thinks we’re all wrong not to inform the police. Immediately. Time is of the essence.” Marvin and Rob nodded. Reed and Merrilou shook their heads.

Merrilou answered gently. “Marie, Alex, I am convinced it really is some kind of misplaced joke, and bringing in the police would just make fools of them and of us and of Zoe. This has happened before. Without telling us, Zoe has spent the night with a girlfriend. Lordy, what a new meanin’ that has taken on.”

Reed finally was heard from. “Please, Merri, don’t get into that again. We’re all upset about it, but the immediate problem is Zoe’s safety. Now, I’m inclined to agree it’s some kind of prank. I think Zoe will come waltzing in here with all kinds of excuses and expect us all to laugh with her and compliment her cleverness, and she’ll think I will be convinced to let her go to that damned acting school and—”

The strident buzz of the phone on the buffet froze us all. Merrilou was the first to jump up.

“NO!” I managed to shout. “Reed, you get it. Demand to speak with Zoe, talk as long as you can. We may hear identifiable background noise. Tell them you don’t have a million, or even near it. Ask them for a couple of days to try to get some money pulled together. Tell them you’re trying hard.”

Reed was pushing Merrilou ungraciously aside, grabbing for the phone. I turned to Rob. “Tape recorder? Speaker phone?”

Marvin was already up and running into the living room. Rob motioned me back toward the kitchen, moving at a trot on the slippery tiles.

“Tape recorder’s in the living room, speaker’s in the kitchen.”

He punched a couple of buttons and Reed’s voice came through, with that sort of echo effect speakers lend to any voice.

“ . . . yes, I’m Reed Catlett. Who are you?”

“Right now, I’m Zoe’s watchdog. Arf, arf.” I heard a girlish titter in the background. “And if you want me to keep on being a friendly puppy, you’ll keep that friggin’ comedian who answered the first time, off the phone. And you’ll tell me you’ve got that million all counted out, and I’ll tell you how you are to get it to me. That is if you want Zoe back. Scarlett O’Hara didn’t sound like she much cared one way or the other.”

The voice did sound young, but not childish. The caller could be most any reasonably adult age. I peered back into the dining room. Reed was pale, and his hand that held the phone was shaking, but he hung tough.

“I don’t do business with dogs or in vacuums. We won’t even discuss money till I know my Zoe is okay. Put her on the line.” His voice was flat and businesslike.

“My, my, aren’t we the bossy one. That won’t last long.” The kidnapper turned away from the phone and said something I couldn’t hear. There was what seemed a long silence.

Then a young girl’s voice cried out, “Oh, Daddy! Daddy, come and take me home! They say they’ll kill me if you don’t pay them. Are you there? I feel awful about this. I’m so sorry things didn’t work out.”

Before Reed could say anything comforting to his daughter, there was some sort of scuffle as she was pulled away. The young man returned. “Satisfied, Daddy? Now here’s what we do. You put a million dollars in fifty- and twenty-dollar bills in a couple of the smallest school backpacks you can fit them in. Unmarked bills, by the way. We’re too smart for that trick. Then you bring—”

“Not so fast, sonny.” Reed was getting mad, which was fine as long as he remembered who had Zoe.

“My first clue to your ignorance of what you’re trying to do is that you are not of the business world. Bill Gates may have a million in cash in his house on a Friday morning, but I sincerely doubt it. I tell you right now, I’ve got about three hundred in the house. And I have a little money in the local bank. If I get that and borrow what cash I can today from my friends around here, I’d probably have fifteen thousand. Or a little more. Will that do it for you?”

Our kidnapper sounded shaky. “Never you mind what world I’m in. And fifteen grand ain’t even a down payment on one of Zoe’s ears, which you’ll get if you keep this shit up. I’ll call you Monday at this time. Have the money . . . all the money!” The connection broke.

We found ourselves back in the dining room, all talking at once. “How did I do?” Reed asked me.

“You did just fine,” I said sincerely. “One small thing, you let him know you picked up on his ignorance of the business world. That’s a clue to who he is and it made him nervous, and you don’t want him any more nervous than he is. Believe me, he’s as scared as you are. You want him to think he’s in complete control—right up to the last minute when the cops snap the cuffs on him. Don’t give him any information. Just try to get what you can out of him. Like is Zoe warm, reasonably fed, healthy? Do they want new bills? The longer you can keep him talking, the more likely you are to learn something.”

I wasn’t giving Reed some information, myself. I’d heard something in Zoe’s plea that I wanted to pursue. But not now. Not with this group.

“Yeah, sorry about that business world slip. It was just so obvious.”

“No great harm. Just be aware when next you speak to him.”

Merrilou’s soft voice came from across the table. “Alex, honey, you did hear how young he sounded and how flip, didn’t you? And that silly giggle. I still think it’s a prank. If Reed had said fifty thousand instead of fifteen, I’ll bet you anything that young man would have taken it.” She leaned against Reed’s back and put her head on his shoulder, her arms around his chest, hands rubbing gently. Reed looked embarrassed and moved away from her.

I answered before she could take him off to bed. “I doubt it. Our watchdog is still thinking of dining on filet mignon. By Monday, we’ll try two hundred thousand, which will buy a lot of T-bones. Depending on how we phrase it, that may work.” Merrilou’s eyes widened, but she made no comment.

“Monday seems so far away,” Marie was teary eyed again. “Poor Zoe sounds just terrified. My God, what do you suppose they’ve done to her?”

“Probably nothing serious. She’s their asset, their only asset until they get the money. That’ll be the time to walk very softly.”

“What do you mean, ‘nothing serious’”? Marvin asked. With his round face and unreliable voice, he seemed quite mild. Until you looked at his eyes. Maybe he really would be a Marine.

“Kidnappers like to humiliate their captives.” I took out a cigarette, glad I had remembered to say captive instead of victim. “It makes it easier for the kidnappers to keep them under control if they’re embarrassed and uncomfortable. So they probably took most of her clothes. They may make her eat food right from the can with her fingers. They probably have warned her not to speak unless they tell her to, or maybe won’t let her use the bathroom alone . . .”

“And you call that ‘nothing serious’? I call that enough to kill the bastards.” Marvin looked ready to kill, and I thought Reed might burst into tears. Rob was bent over, petting Fargo, to cover his own emotion, I assumed. Poor Marie was sobbing outright. Even Merrilou looked distressed.

“Look,” I explained, “it’s just that if they belittle her, they feel bigger. It makes the captive feel powerless. It’s not nice, but it isn’t really harmful. She’ll handle it.” I took a sip of my now-cold coffee, tried not to wince and hoped to God I was right about a seventeen-year-old I had never met.

“Now, Reed, what’s the real story on the money?”

“First, I was lying about the bank. Most of my easily convertible assets are at Fishermen’s Bank. I just didn’t think that punk needed to know that.” I nodded in approval. And he went on.

“The problem will be getting it into cash over a weekend. In four or five days, I could have close to a million. I’m not sure to the exact thousand.”

“Yeah.” I thought it must be nice to have a million, even if it did vary a thousand here, a thousand there. “Anyway, Reed, naturally we would try very hard to settle for a lot less.”

“Why? What difference does it make how much is in the knapsacks, when they’ll only have them for a minute or two?”

“Uh, well, Reed, you’ve elected to go with one lonely private investigator instead an entire police force plus the FBI. There’s only one of me and my only concern will be getting Zoe home in one piece. They may well get clean away with the money. I’ll be in touch. C’mon, Fargo.”