In Death's Shadow (18 page)

Beneath the remains of a roll of tar paper, I found a tangle of iron rods of the kind normally used to reinforce concrete. I picked carefully through the rods, tossing several aside before selecting one about two and a half feet long. Brandishing it like a sword, I scrambled back to the van, banging my shins several times on the corners of protruding plywood boards.

"Hold tight! It's going to take me a minute or two to bust this thing open."

A minute or two.
That was optimistic.

I studied the chain and the padlock, trying to decide which was the more vulnerable. Finally, I inserted one end of the rod between the jaws of the padlock, braced the rod against the door of the van, and yanked down.

I succeeded only in bending the rod.

I eased the rod out, turned it around and threaded it through one of the links of the chain. "A chain is only as strong as its weakest link," I muttered as I applied pressure to the link. Nothing happened, except a searing pain shot up my arm.

I removed the rod and reinserted it halfway, beginning at the point where the chain met the padlock. I began turning the rod clockwise, hand over hand, winding the chain up. When I'd wound it as far to the right as it would go, I grabbed the right end of the rod with both hands, hung on and pulled down with all my weight, lifting my feet up off the ground.

Once. Twice. I rocked the van.

Three times. Four. The chain groaned.

Suddenly, the chain snapped, throwing me, my hat, the rod, the chain, and the padlock to the ground all in one great, glorious heap.

Fueled by adrenaline, I shot to my feet and was reaching for the handle to the cargo door when a heavy hand fell on my shoulder and squeezed hard.

"Oh, no you don't!"

Instantly, every ounce of energy seemed to drain from my body. I felt limp and defeated. I turned to face my assailant.

Chet loomed over me, lean and muscular, tall as a tree. He was dressed in khaki pants and a navy blue shirt with Chet embroidered on it in orange script. Without doubt he was the gardener I'd first seen in Mrs. Bromley's clandestine photos. His shirt matched his van, I remembered thinking. You pay extra for that.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that Mrs. Bromley had managed to open the door from the inside. The crack widened as the door swung slowly outward.

Hoping to distract Chet, I dropped to the ground and scrambled to retrieve my iron rod. I grabbed the rod, rolled over, and swung it at Chet's shins, connecting with one of them with a resounding crack.

"Ooooow! You bitch!" Hopping on one leg, Chet managed to grab my arm and twist it behind my back, iron rod and all, pulling my arm painfully skyward. With his free hand, he grasped my weapon, twisted, and by sheer strength, pulled it out of my clenched hand. The last time I saw the rod, it was sailing over the chain-link fence. After what I'd done to his shin, I was counting myself lucky he didn't beat me to death with the thing.

In the meantime, Mrs. Bromley's tennis shoes had hit the ground. She picked up my purse and swung it at Chet, like a Biblical slingshot, but it bounced ineffectually off his head.

Chet tugged me back against him, reached around and clamped my neck in the crook of his arm. He jerked us both around to face Mrs. Bromley. "Get back in the van," he ordered, "or I'll break her fucking neck."

Mrs. Bromley froze, my purse dangling by its strap from her hand. Her eyes darted from my face to Chet's, apparently weighing her options.

Her eyes flashed. If she'd had a gun, I don't believe she would have hesitated to shoot the bastard, but with only my purse as a weapon, what choice did she have? She set my purse carefully inside the van, turned and climbed obediently back in.

Unless the police showed up within the next five seconds, our geese were cooked.

Chet released his grip on my neck but was still twisting my arm so painfully that tears came to my eyes. Holding me securely, he duck-walked me over to the cargo door, boosted me up with a well-placed, retaliatory knee kick to my butt, and dumped me unceremoniously in a heap on the floor.

"I'm sorry," Mrs. Bromley whispered.

I gathered my legs under me and sat up, shading my eyes against the glare of the sun that poured through the door. "That's okay," I said. "You gave it your best shot."

Suddenly, the sun was blocked by Chet's bulk as he stood framed in the doorway. "How'd'ja find . . . ?" he drawled.

A light in his attic blinked on. "Yeah." Chet picked up my handbag, rummaged through the pockets until he found my cell phone. "Naughty, naughty!" he said. He drew his arm back and sent my cell phone flying in a wide, high arc until it landed somewhere on the Bloomsbury Square construction site where an enterprising youngster would find it the following morning and use up all my minutes having phone sex with some call girl in Miami.

Chet tossed my purse back into the van, where it landed at my feet with a thud. "Now you'll stay out of trouble."

His hard, dark eyes settled on Mrs. Bromley. "You must have one on you, too, then." He held out his hand. "Give."

Mrs. Bromley unclipped her cell phone from her belt and reluctantly handed it over. Soon it was sailing over the chain-link fence in the general direction of mine.

Chet started to close the door, but seemed to think better of it. "You ladies are too damn much trouble," he muttered. He rubbed the spot on his head where Mrs. Bromley had clipped him with my purse, then limped back a few steps, staring into the van, thinking. It was probably a relatively new experience for him.

While he stared, I looked around the inside of the van, too, hoping to find something I could use as a weapon.

Whatever else Chet might be, he was definitely a gardener. The van was chock full of the wherewithal required to provide fairly competent lawn care service. A lawn mower was lashed to one wall with bungee cords; hedge clippers, a chain saw, pruning shears, shovels, rakes surrounded us. Any one of them would have been useful as a weapon if they hadn't been stowed away so securely. Zero chance of getting any into my hot little hands while Chet's beady eyes were still upon us.

Chet seemed to be cataloging the contents of the van, too. Hanging on a metal hook near the door was a bright orange extension cord, neatly coiled. He reached out and lifted it off the hook.

"You two sit together now."

I scowled. "We are sitting together."

"No. Back-to-back."

I turned obediently until I was sitting directly behind Mrs. Bromley.

"Closer," he said. "Now link your arms together."

When he was satisfied with our position, Chet stepped into the van. He paused a few cautious feet away. "No funny business now."

"We'll behave," I assured him. We were confined in such close quarters, I feared that if I tried anything, I'd end up injuring Mrs. Bromley.

I never knew an extension cord could be so long. Chet managed to wrap it around our waists, twine it about our necks, draw it tightly across my chest, loop it down around my ankles, and pass it back around our waists again. By the grunts, I could tell when he got to the knot tying part, somewhere out of reach in the vicinity of Mrs. Bromley's ankles.

Apparently satisfied, he climbed down and slammed the cargo door behind him. A few seconds later the shock absorbers squeaked and the van heeled to the left as he climbed into the driver's seat. The engine roared to life and, tires spinning on the loose dirt, our kidnapper peeled out onto St. John's Street.

"Keep track of the turns," I said in quiet desperation.

We turned right, then stopped. "This must be the light on Rowe Boulevard," I guessed, struggling to loosen our bonds.

We turned right again, then made another right, then a left, and an almost immediate right. By this time I figured we were in West Annapolis. But then the van made a series of zigzags, perhaps intentionally, or perhaps because Chet was lost again, and it wasn't long before I lost all track of where we might be. We could have been in Admiral Heights or Ferry Farms or all the way out in Cape St. Claire, for all I knew.

Suddenly, Chet took a sharp left, and both Mrs. Bromley and I toppled over. "Ouch!" she cried.

"What is it?"

"Something's digging into my side!"

"Hold tight!" I struggled to work us back into a sitting position, but the van took another hard turn and we rolled again, sliding along the floorboards. This time I knocked my head on a corner of the lawn mower and saw stars.

For what seemed like hours, but was probably only twenty minutes, we careened around like tennis shoes in a dryer, before the van finally screeched to a stop, throwing us back against a plastic, five gallon gasoline tank. There was an electronic beep from within the cab.

"What's that?" Mrs. Bromley whimpered.

"I think it's a garage door opener."

The van inched forward, then lurched to a stop. There was another beep, and the sound of a garage door grinding down.

Mrs. Bromley and I waited, hardly daring to breathe. "I wonder where we are?" she whispered after a moment of silence.

In the dark, I shrugged. "I don't have the vaguest idea," I whispered back.

Chet turned off the ignition and climbed out of the cab. We heard the sound of a door opening, and muffled conversation. After a few minutes more, the cargo door opened and Chet climbed into the van. Without saying a word, he went about the business of releasing us from the extension cord, then hopped out.

Mrs. Bromley and I were rubbing our arms and checking each other for damage when a hand appeared at the door, followed by a brown sleeve and a face only a mother could love.

“Well, ladies, what a pleasure to see you today." It was Nick Pottorff.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I looked Nick Pottorff straight in the eye. "Who the hell are you?"

Mrs. Bromley crossed her arms over her bosom and glared at him, too. "And what do you want with us?"

Pottorff ignored her, keeping his eyes on me. There was no flash of recognition, thank goodness, just a hint of ill-concealed amusement. "Your friend, here, she's been a busy little bee with her camera."

"She's not my friend. She's my mother," I lied smoothly.

"I'm president of the Ginger Cove garden club," Mrs. Bromley pouted. "I was photographing the
tulip
beds, for heaven's sake, and the next thing I knew, this
thug
—" She glared at Chet so fiercely that he actually backed away.

"Nice try, Mom." Pottorff held out his hand and helped Mrs. Bromley alight from the van.

He offered me the same assistance, but I kept my hands to myself. If I actually had to touch the loathsome toad, I knew my fingers would drop off. "No thanks. I can manage."

When my feet hit the ground, I nearly collapsed. My left leg had gone to sleep. I pounded on it with my fist, trying to get the circulation going again. "Are you all right, Mom?"

Mrs. Bromley's smile was unconvincing. "As well as could be expected, dear."

We were standing on the spotless concrete floor of a modem, three-car garage. Except for the van, it was empty. No tools lined the back wall, no paint cans, no old snow tires, no broken-down bicycles or rusty shovels. A Stepford garage. It wasn't natural.

Pottorff extended an arm and bowed slightly, like a headwaiter about to escort us to our table. "Please, follow me."

With Chet bringing up the rear, we followed Pottorff up a short flight of stairs, through a mud room where winter coats and rain slickers hung on hooks in an orderly row, into an eye-poppingly gorgeous gourmet kitchen. Valerie would have loved this, I thought. As we trooped past a high-tech appliance island, I stole a glance out the window, hoping to recognize the neighborhood, but it was impossible. Nick Pottorff's house, if this was his house, had been built on a heavily wooded lot. Through a thick canopy of leaves I thought I caught a glimpse of water, but I couldn't be sure.

Chet prodded me in the back. "Move along, lady."

Pottorff opened a door next to an antique Dutch cupboard and led us down a flight of stairs.

I feared we would find a dungeon at the end of it, or a dark, dank basement, but the stairs were broad and carpeted, and when we reached the bottom, we found ourselves in a luxurious family room right out of the pages of
House Beautiful
. A sixty-inch HDTV plasma screen was mounted on one wall, flanked by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. To our right was an extensive bar of carved oak, modeled on an English pub. At least two kinds of beer seemed to be on tap, as well as a wide range of hard liquor, if the number of bottles on display was any indication. A beveled mirror reflected the light from a Tiffany-style tight fixture, and mounted above the mirror was the piece de resistance: a copy of Goya's
Naked Maya
. From her vantage point over the bar, the Maya enjoyed a view of a massive stone fireplace.

"You have a lovely home." My voice dripped acid.

Pottorff turned and studied me without smiling. "Please, give me a moment." He lifted a key from a hook mounted next to a decorative chalkboard that had "Happy Hour" painted on it, then ambled down a short hallway, at the end of which was a door made of dark wood, inset with etched glass.

I squinted. Curlicues and dolphins, I thought, or maybe they were mermaids. Hard to tell.

Pottorff unlocked the door, turned and waggled his fingers in a come-hither way.

With Chet at our backs to hustle us along, we toddled down the hallway past a glass front refrigerator filled with beverages. Like at 7-Eleven, only fancier.

"Please. Wait in here," Pottorff said, stepping aside.

"Wait for what?" I asked.

"Please." He opened the door wider.

"But it's a wine cellar," I said, stepping with some reluctance into the room.

Nick Pottorff turned to Mrs. Bromley. "Your daughter has remarkable powers of observation."

"And it's cold in here," Mrs. Bromley complained. "We don't have sweaters."

"Wine cellars are maintained at fifty-five degrees," I informed Pottorff. "Like a cave."

"Are you a tour guide now?" Pottorff grinned, revealing a row of crooked teeth. "You aren't going to be in here all that long," he said.

"You hope," added the despicable Chet.

Pottorff scowled. "Shut up, Chet, and get the ladies a blanket."

Chet turned and sauntered down the hall. With his back to us, I noticed the gun for the first time, tucked inside the waistband of his khakis. I felt my lunch beginning to crawl back up my esophagus. Chet returned in less than a minute carrying a red plaid blanket he'd snatched from the back of a leather sofa; I'd noticed it in the family room when we walked by. He tossed the blanket into the room, where it landed on the floor in an untidy heap.

Pottorff left, making an elaborate production of closing and locking the door behind him. The only light in the room came through the glass pane in the door. I managed to retrieve the blanket and drape it over Mrs. Bromley's shoulders.

"Whose house is this, do you know?" she whispered.

"I wish I did. Not Nick Pottorff's, surely. Every time I've seen him, he's been wearing the same brown suit. I doubt he could afford a place like this."

"His teeth need work, too," said Mrs. Bromley. Next to me, she shivered. "Jablonsky, then?"

"That'd be my guess. It's fancy enough for Fishing Creek Farm, although I didn't have the impression that Chet was driving in that direction. Whoever he is," I mused, "the guy's got money."

In the light coming through the glass pane, I could see Mrs. Bromley's worried face. "Help me find a light switch," I said. We ran our hands along the walls on both sides of the door, without success. "Must be on the outside," I grumbled, angry at myself for feeling defeated by a simple thing like a light switch.

Mrs. Bromley spread the blanket on the floor and sat down on it, leaning back against the stout leg of a tasting table that dominated the center of the room. She patted the floor next to her. "Sit, Hannah. Let's consider our options."

To tell the truth, I didn't think we had many options, but I plopped down next to her anyway. We sat in companionable silence for a few minutes while my eyes gradually became accustomed to the semidarkness.

At home, my "wine cellar" consists of six pine shelves that Paul brought home from IKEA and banged together in the pantry. Mrs. Bromley and I were being held captive in the kind of wine cellar you read about in
Wine Spectator
. I knew that nobody actually
owned
a wine cellar like this, except movie stars and dot-com kings.

"I'm going to case the joint," I told Mrs. Bromley. I stood and worked my way clockwise around our prison, running my hands along the wine racks like a blind man. They were smoothly polished and made of wood. To the left of the door, diamond-shaped bins lined the wall. When I turned the corner, my hands met more bins, then an alcove that included a small sink set flush with the countertop—marble, from the coolness of it. I reached up. Stemware was suspended from racks mounted overhead; when I touched them, they tinkled like wind chimes. This had to be a decanting table.

I moved on past the decanting table, where there were more bins, mostly with single slots, extending straight up to the ceiling, ten feet or more above my head. Set into a niche near the ceiling was an air conditioner that kept the wine at a constant 55 degrees, as I suspected. Even in the dim light, I could distinguish the two saucer-sized air vents that blew cool air into the room.

Suddenly inspired, I grabbed a bottle by the neck and eased it out of its slot. I stuck my hand into the slot up to my elbow, hoping I'd discover the walls were made of Sheetrock or something equally flimsy, but my fingers met only rough, cold stone.

I plopped back down next to Mrs. Bromley. "Well, that was the grand tour. Now what do I do?"

"I'm sorry, Hannah. This is all my fault."

"Not entirely your fault," I assured her. "I'm the one who lit the fire under Jablonsky, remember?"

I studied her profile, and even though her chin was quivering, I asked her the question I'd been meaning to ask for several hours. "I thought you were staying in Chestertown at a B and B! How did these creeps find you?"

Mrs. Bromley lowered her head and stared at her thumbs. "I changed my mind. I didn't go to Chestertown."

"Mrs. B!"

"I just said I was going to Chestertown so you wouldn't worry about me."

"So you
planned
to go after Chet with your camera?"

Mrs. Bromley nodded miserably.

I had toyed with the idea of not telling her about Gail, but this didn't seem like the time to begin keeping secrets from one another. "Mrs. Bromley, we're in real danger here." I informed her of Gail's murder, skipping over the details about my finding the body.

"Gail makes eight," she muttered when I'd finished my story.

"Yes, and if we don't want to be numbers nine and ten, we need to get ourselves out of here! If Pottorff killed your friends at Ginger Cove, and Gail, and Valerie, I don't think he'll have any qualms about offing a middle-aged woman and her meddlesome mother."

On the other side of the door the television had come on, so loud it could blister paint. Chet had figured out how to work the DVD player and was watching a movie,
Twister
, from the sound of it. A storm came howling out of every speaker in the room.

I padded across the tile floor and tried the door, just in case, but it was securely locked.

"Hand me my purse, will you, Mrs. B?'

I extracted my Visa card and slid it along the crack between the door frame and the lock, but a metal flange prevented the edge of my card from reaching and tripping the latch. "Shit!" I sat down on the floor, cross-legged, resting my back against the tasting table. "He must have some valuable wines in here. It's locked up like Fort Knox."

"No need to whisper, dear," she said. "Chet's not going to hear anything over that raging storm!"

"The door's glass," I observed. "Wanna break a few bottles?"

"I'd break
all
the bottles if I thought it would help, but we'd have to get by Chet, and he has a gun."

So Mrs. Bromley had noticed the gun, too.

"If only we had a window." I surveyed the room again, but wine racks covered every floor-to-ceiling inch. If there were ever any windows in this part of the basement, they had been covered up during construction.

Mrs. Bromley pointed up. "Hannah, that air conditioner has to exhaust out to somewhere. Could it be installed in a window?"

I jumped to my feet. The woman was brilliant! "Help me," I said.

Standing directly under the air conditioner, I pulled a bottle out of its slot and handed it to Mrs. Bromley, who set it on the floor. Working as a team, I pulled another, and another, handing the bottles off to her. Bottle after bottle, I reached higher and higher, until I had cleared a ladder of makeshift toeholds. Then I started to climb.

"Be careful!" Mrs. Bromley called after me.

Once at the top, I held on with one hand and studied the air conditioner, a Whisperkool. I wanted to shut off the cold air that was blasting into my face, but the controls were locked behind a Plexiglas panel.

The Whisperkool itself was secured to the wall with long metal bolts. Above it, though, a wooden panel had been fitted into the space between the top of the air conditioner and the ceiling. It was what lay behind that panel that looked promising.

Holding onto the air conditioner with one hand, I moved my foot gingerly to another toehold and leaned as far forward as I could to examine the panel. I poked at it with my finger. It didn't budge. I grabbed the top of the Whisperkool and pulled down. The panel moved a fraction of an inch. Encouraged, I jiggled the air conditioner up and down and was elated when the panel responded, admitting a welcome sliver of daylight.

A muffled "Yay!" drifted up from below.

"If I can just work this panel loose, I think I can reach the window!"

"Will we be able to climb out?" she asked.

"I don't know, Mrs. B. The air conditioner might be in the way."

I continued jiggling the air conditioner up and down, up and down, like a kid on a pogo stick. The sliver of light became a slit, and the area I was working in grew marginally brighter, but it was slow going, and I was afraid I might pull the air conditioner clean off the wall. If the falling air conditioner didn't kill us outright, then Chet would probably finish the job when he came in to see what we had been up to.

"Mrs. B, look around down there and see if you can find me a corkscrew, something I can pry with."