Paddy Plays in Dead Mule Swamp (21 page)

By two-thirty I had bright teal walls
and white woodwork in the porch. I could picture the finished room
with the white wicker and flowered cushions, but nothing frilly. I
was thinking a bold print with both teal and whatever accent color
I finally chose for the main room.

Paddy had asked to come in earlier,
and he had followed me around as I cleaned the brushes, and changed
out of my painting clothes. He gave me his sad eye look.

“You want a walk, don’t you?” I
asked.

“Walk” was one of his favorite words,
and he began to dance around, his long tail thumping against a
chair leg.

“All right. Let’s go look at that old
house again. It really must have been a nice place in its heyday. I
should ask Cora if the family who lived there was important. I bet
they were.”

Once more we drove the Jeep to the
west side of the railroad bridge, and crossed the black creosoted
ties that smelled of tar even after a century. When we reached the
east side, I patted my jeans pocket. The new cell phone was safe in
its depths, but I wasn’t used to it yet, and was insecure about
losing the technological gadget.

The woods along the creek were lovely
and cool. Once again, I noticed the narrow trail that threaded
between the trees, away from the water. I thought there must be
dozens of these simple trails through the woods, made by wildlife,
or local inhabitants. This one looked interesting, but I decided
not to follow it today.

The section by the Thorpe River took
about ten minutes to walk, and then we headed east from the dead
end of the dirt road. There really wasn’t any shade since sun was
still high, but at least the sun was over my shoulder and not in my
eyes as we walked this direction. At first, I focused on the
roadside plants, enjoying the daisies and Queen Anne’s lace.
Occasional yellow patches of St. John’s wort broke the white
expanse.

As I approached the old
house, but before I had decided whether I was going to just walk up
to it and open the door, I saw a flicker of motion out of the
corner of my eye.
Just a bird—maybe
nesting in the front porch
, I thought.
Then I saw it again. Someone was in the house. I was seeing a
person in a white t-shirt passing back and forth in front of a
window. I backed up a few steps, to hopefully be out of sight of
that person, and thought a minute.

I clipped Paddy on the leash to keep
him close. No sense letting someone see him, either. I backed up a
few more steps, and cut to my right into the edge of the woods that
used to border the lawn of the old house. The lawn had grown up to
brush and would have been difficult to push through, but the woods
were more open. There was an old fence line, and I followed it
carefully, trying to be quiet. After we’d penetrated the forest by
just a few yards I could see the back of the house, and it was not
deserted, as I would have expected. On a cement slab, outside what
was probably the kitchen door, there were several new cardboard
boxes, a couple of lawn chairs, a stack of plastic bucket lids, and
an ashtray overflowing with butts.

I wasn’t doing anything stupid this
time. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed 9-1-1.

“This is Forest County 9-1-1. What is
your emergency?” came a crisp voice.

“This is Ana Raven, I’m on East
South...” the connection broke. Great, maybe there wasn’t enough
coverage here on the State Forest side of the river. I dialed
again.

“This is Forest County 9-1-1. What is
your emergency?”

“Ana Raven here. Please send
someone...” the phone went dead again. Still holding the dog
closely—thankfully he hadn’t started barking—I worked my way back
toward the road. I was trying to remember the number for the
Sheriff’s Department, but it just wouldn’t come to me. All I could
think of was the Cherry Hill police number, and as I reached the
road again I quickly pushed the buttons for the exchange and
4-4-5-5. I could hear the number ringing when suddenly I was
encircled from behind by strong arms and both of my hands opened
involuntarily. Paddy yelped and pulled loose, and the phone fell
into the dirt road.

“Hey!” I yelled. “Who... Help!” The
phone was still open. I struggled and tried to turn to see who had
hold of me. All I could see were solid arms and hands, which were
Caucasian. It wasn’t DuWayne, and it wasn’t Pablo. Paddy ran off a
few steps and began to bark with a high, anxious voice. My twisting
and kicking were succeeding in keeping the attacker somewhat off
balance, but I couldn’t work myself free. Whoever had hold of me
was large and strong. The two remaining bandages on my arm had
rubbed off and the arm was bleeding, but it didn’t seem important
at all. We circled in the roadway, and I saw a big foot come down
firmly on my new cell phone. The man ground it against the sand and
sparse gravel under his shoe, and I could only hope someone at the
Cherry Hill Police Station had answered and heard me yelling before
my new phone was crushed.

Chapter 31

“Go to the car, Paddy!” I was trying
hard to take a deep breath and make my voice as stern as possible,
but my ribs were being pressed against my lungs and I couldn’t
speak as loudly as I wanted. The dog ran off a short way and then
hesitated. He looked as if he wanted to help me, but he didn’t have
a vicious bone in his body, and probably thought this was some new
game.

However, Paddy didn’t like what he
saw. He turned and walked slowly toward us, his eyes fixed on a
point over my shoulder. His lip curled as if he were going to
growl.

“No, Paddy. Go to the car!” Paddy
circled with indecision.

The man lunged, trying to step on the
end of Paddy’s leash, which put him slightly off balance. I managed
to dig an elbow into his ribs, and he grunted. He couldn’t quite
reach the dancing leash.

“Go! Go to the car!” Paddy finally got
the message and began to run westward down the road as fast as he
could, the leash trailing behind him. I prayed it wouldn’t catch on
anything.

The man now gave me his undivided
attention, and I had to admit there wasn’t going to be any physical
contest. The man was much stronger than I. All I could hope for was
to delay whatever he had in mind, in hopes that Tracy would figure
out where I was and that I needed help. He began to drag me toward
the house. Apparently, he wasn’t going to worry about covering
tracks any longer, as he pulled me through the previously unbroken
weeds. I dug in my heels and tried to swing my legs from side to
side to make as visible a trail as possible. I didn’t waste any
effort in yelling; I was pretty sure no one who might help me was
close enough to hear.

When we got to the house I was
physically lifted and heaved onto the porch. The front door was
opened by someone from the inside. Just for a moment I thought I
might still get away, and stumbled to my right, away from the dark
opening. In that moment, I saw the man who had grabbed me. He was
tall and blond with bulging muscles. It was no one I knew. His bulk
did not affect his speed, and with no difficulty at all he caught
my arm and growled, “Not so fast, lady. You aren’t going
anywhere.”

My logic was failing me, and I yelled,
“Help! Anybody, help!”

The blond man smacked his other large
hand over my mouth. “Give it up.” He forced me inside the old
house, and the door was slammed shut.

Despite it being bright outside, this
room faced north and the interior was dim enough that my eyes
needed a few minutes to adjust. Before I could see much of
anything, my hands were tied behind my back with a bandana, and
then some twine was produced. I was pushed into a filthy, broken,
overstuffed chair. The blond man held my shoulders against the
padded seat back from behind, and another man knelt in front of me
and tied my ankles to the stubby legs of the chair. The position
was awkward, and the twine bit into my ankles, even through my
socks. When this man unbent from his task I looked into his face.
It was Pablo Ybarra.

Behind him, standing and facing me
were the blond man, and Pablo’s sister. “Hello, Juanita,” I began.
“And, I’m guessing you must be Larry Louama. I’ve heard so much
about you. It’s nice to finally meet you.” I couldn’t believe they
were too dumb to catch my sarcasm, but they didn’t react to it. No
one said the big man wasn’t Larry, so I assumed I was
right.

“Why couldn’t you just mind your own
business?” Juanita asked. She was no longer the polite, saleswoman
who had helped me out of the ditch. She practically spat the words
at me.

“You do not want to make my sister
angry,” Pablo said in a quiet, steely tone.

“Did you really stop to help me the
other day?” I asked Juanita. “Or were you part of the plan to knock
me off the road? Maybe you were supposed to find out if I’d been
hurt badly enough to keep me from walking down this road. Who owns
that black truck, Pablo or DuWayne?”

“You are too smart for your own good.”
She looked at the men, but didn’t answer my questions. “What are we
going to do with her? You just had to drag her in here, so now
she’s seen way too much.”

I looked around, wondering what I was
supposed to have seen, besides these three people. All I saw was a
row of six five-gallon buckets lined up against one of the moldy,
stained walls. My best hope was to stall for time. I turned to
Larry. “I suppose this is where you’ve been living, since no one
could find you. I guess you came in by the back door all the time.
I know! That friend Juanita claimed to have on Mulberry Hill is
just a good place to park, and then you can follow some forgotten
trail down here without using the front at all.”

Larry glanced at Juanita. “She really
is mouthy. I broke her cell phone before she could get anyone, but
I don’t like it that the dog got away. What if he’s smart enough to
bring someone back? Let’s shut her up and get out of
here.”

I wasn’t sure if that meant they just
planned to gag me, or if the “shutting up” was to be a more
permanent kind.

Juanita nodded toward the
pails.

“It will take us three trips to carry
these up the hill, plus the stuff on the kitchen porch.” Pablo
complained. “That will take too long. Someone’s bound to miss
her.”

“Go get the truck,” Juanita said.
We’ll have to take a chance to get out of here quick. We can take
her along and deal with her later.” It looked as if Juanita was in
charge here.

I no longer had any doubts about what
they had in mind for me. The bandana around my wrists was wrapped
tightly, but a knot in folded fabric just couldn’t be pulled taut.
I had been working on it with my fingers the whole time we were
talking. It was now loosened, and my hands were free, but I kept
them behind me. The twine around my ankles was impossible to deal
with in secret, and I needed the odds to be more in my
favor.

Pablo headed toward the back of the
house, presumably to get the truck. Larry lifted two buckets. He
started for the front door.

“Put them on the kitchen porch,”
Juanita ordered. “Don’t advertise.”

Larry changed directions and headed
for the back of the house. The buckets had no lids, and as he
carried them past me, I saw they contained plastic wrapped packages
of something white. It looked as if the drug business was doing
fine. I recalled how Juanita had described her career: “selling
things to people with lots of money.” In a minute, Larry was back
and picked up two more of the pails. He also took those out the
back door—I heard it open—and returned for the final
two.

“Wait a minute.” I said. “I’d really
like to know what happened to Angelica, and I think you three know
the answer to that question.”

Larry laughed, but there was no humor
in his tone. “Ask her,” he said, nodding his head at Juanita, and
continued to the kitchen. The outer door banged again. I was alone
in the room with Juanita, who had moved close, as if to guard me. I
knew I’d never have better odds, although I had no idea how I could
overcome her and Larry, too.

It was difficult to come up out of the
overstuffed chair quickly, but I had surprise on my side, and I
lurched upward and forward, grabbing for Juanita’s neck. She leaned
backward, but I succeeded in knocking her off balance. She fell and
hit her head on the floor, and I fell sideways against the arm of
the chair. My tied legs prevented me from reaching her. I hoped she
was unconscious, but the blow hadn’t been hard enough, and before I
could get straightened up myself, she was on her hands and knees,
facing me.

As she rose, she pulled a knife from a
sheath in her boot.

Chapter 32

Several things happened all at once. I
heard Larry call from the back porch, “What’s going on in there?”
and the back door banged against the wall. Juanita straightened up,
and started toward me with the knife extended. Her eyes were dark
pits in her face, and she pulled her lips away from her
teeth.

“You nosy old bitch,” she
snarled.

Almost simultaneously, the front door
opened, and DuWayne rushed in. I knew I was completely out of luck
now. But instead of hurrying to restrain me, he tackled Juanita
from behind, and threw her to the floor. She lay still; I thought
she had hit her head again. The knife clattered off just out of my
reach.