The Treble Wore Trouble (The Liturgical Mysteries) (13 page)

"Our bedroom's on the other end," said Hog. "Across from the guest room. D'Artagnan stays in the guest room when he's around." D'Artagnan was Noylene's son by a previous marriage. Currently in his thirties, D'Artagnan was a sometime bounty hunter and full-time ne'er-do-well.

"You don't think that D'Artagnan had anything ..." I started, but Noylene cut me off.

"No, he did not!"

"Is he around where we could talk to him?"

"I'm telling you he had nothing to do with it," said Noylene. "He knows that if he did something like this, it'd be the
last
thing he ever did." This was not an idle threat from Noylene, and I'd bet that D'Artagnan knew it. "Besides," she continued, "D'Artagnan's been in Tucson since last week."

"You sure he's there?"

"That's what the Pima County assistant district attorney said. Asked me if I wanted to post his bond. I said no, thanks, let him stay in there for a while."

I grunted. Noylene said, "The note was there on the pillow," then pointed to the window on the back wall. "That window's been busted. Last night, I guess. The glass is okay, but the hatch has been sprung. Somebody busted it, slid it open, and took Rahab. There's a bottle missing, too." She started crying.

"Let's see if we can get some prints from the window," I said to Nancy. "And call the FBI. They've got more experience and resources than we do."

"Don't you dare!" barked Noylene, her tears drying up as quickly as they started. "No FBI! I only called
you
by mistake. I panicked."

"They said they'd kill the boy," said Brother Hog. "You read the note."

"They always say that," said Nancy. "Our best bet is to find them and find them fast, and the FBI can help us with that."

"No!" said Hog. "No FBI!"

Noylene looked at me, a pleading look coupled with great sadness. She started chewing on her bottom lip, then said, "I don't want anyone to know about this. You tell Meg that she is not to tell anyone. We'll wait and hear what the kidnappers have to say."

"Can we tap your phone at least?" Nancy said. "We might get a trace we can use. Maybe a location if we're lucky. It'll take me a couple of hours to get it set up, but I can do it from the office."

Hog nodded, but didn't say anything.

"You'll let us know as soon as they call?" I asked. "We're involved now, whether you like it or not, but we don't have to call the FBI unless Rahab's taken across state lines."

"Yeah," said Noylene with resolve. "We'll let you know."

"It would be good to copy the serial numbers of all the bills. It won't take two of you a few hours. Seven hundred fifty hundred dollar bills. You want some help, I can get someone over here. Dave, maybe."

"No, thanks," said Noylene. "We can do that ourselves."

"Call when you hear from them," I admonished again. "We can help you."

"We'll call," said Noylene. "I'll tell you this. The first thing we're going to do is get Rahab back. The second thing is to find whoever did this. When we do, they won't be doing it again."

* * *

Nancy went back to the office to set up the phone tap. I stayed and dusted for prints. There were none. None, as in
not any
. The window had been completely wiped down. I got in my truck and headed home for a shower thinking that this was not going to end well.

Chapter 14

It took Nancy about forty minutes to set up the tap with the telephone company and she was finished by the time I showed up at the station. Now she could log in to her computer or iPhone and trace the call in real time. We could also listen in and record the call. If the phone used to call Noylene was on a land line, and if an address was attached to it, the trace was easy and she'd have the address in short order. If the phone was a mobile and had a GPS chip, she could get an exact fix on the location, then follow it if it moved.

"Do you want Dave to go babysit the Faberge-Dupont-McTavishes?" she asked. "I called him and he's coming in, but he could just as easily go on up to Quail Ridge."

"I don't think it'd do any good, and probably just make them nervous," I answered. "I'll drive up and check on them around noon and see how they're doing with those serial numbers."

"You think this is connected to Johnny Talltrees? It'd be a heck of a coincidence if it wasn't."

"Yeah," I answered. "We operate under the assumption that there are no coincidences. But right now we have to concentrate our efforts on getting the boy back safely."

"I agree," said Nancy.

Meg opened the door to the station and walked in. She looked worried.

"What's the news?" she asked.

"No news," I said. "All we have is the ransom note. No prints, no identifying marks, no bad grammar, nothing. The kidnappers say they're going to call this afternoon with instructions."

"Oh, I hope he's okay," Meg said.

"I'll bet he's fine," said Nancy, taking the note from my hand and reading it again.

We have your boy. We want $75,000 in non-sequential hundred dollar bills. We'll contact you this afternoon. If you involve the police or fail to follow our instructions, we will dispatch the boy. We care nothing for him and are already killers. We have nothing to lose.

Nancy said, "This is a close job. Somebody who knows the family."

"I agree," I said. "Noylene and Hog don't live like they have money, but they do. Someone had to know that."

Nancy said, "The window hasp was busted, but the glass wasn't broken. It was the only window in the back. Rahab's room. That trailer has four bedrooms so the kidnappers had to know where the kid slept."

"So at least one of them has been in their house," said Meg.

"I think it's just one person," I said. "The note says 'we,' but why would 'we' ask for only seventy-five thousand dollars? If they thought that Noylene and Hog had seventy-five thousand, why wouldn't they think they had a hundred? Or two hundred? 'We' is always more greedy than 'I.' He wants a specific amount, and it's not that much in the grand scheme of things. Rather, it's an amount that the kidnapper knows they can get their hands on, and fast."

"Agreed," said Nancy. "Also, he says 'we' five times in this note. Overkill."

"Non-sequential bills," said Meg, looking over Nancy's shoulder. "I would have said 'unmarked.' That's what they always say on the cop shows — unmarked bills."

"Good point," I said. "I'd say that whoever it is is educated. Also, notice that the kidnapper says 'dispatch.' He can't bring himself to contemplate the word 'kill.' Can't even
write
it. Not since they're talking about a child." I thought for a moment. "You know what? ..."

"It's a woman!" interrupted Meg. "I know it."

"I think you're right," I said.

"Yep," agreed Nancy. "If it is, I don't think a woman will hurt that baby, especially if she knows him."

"Someone at the Beautifery?" Meg said.

"Yeah," I said, and mentally ran through Noylene's Purveyors of Beauty. Goldi Fawn Birtwhistle, Darla Kildair, and Debbie Understreet. I didn't know much about any of them. Goldi Fawn was a member of the choir, but other than the fact that she was a Christian astrologer, I had no knowledge of her personal situation. I knew Darla and Debbie even less.

"Want me to check on Noylene's employees?" asked Nancy.

"Yes, I do," I said, and named them. "We should probably look at Pete's employees, too. Noylene works at the Slab almost every day." I thought for a moment. "Let's review Hog's acquaintances, too. Could be that the link is Brother Hog instead of Noylene."

* * *

The next couple of hours passed slowly. At noon, I decided to drive back up to Quail Ridge and see if Hog and Noylene had recorded the serial numbers of the bills — this presuming that the two of them had seventy-five thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills stashed somewhere in or near the trailer. I was pretty sure they did. I'd talked to Meg a couple of times after Noylene 's call early in the morning, filling her in on our progress, or rather, lack of it. Now, driving back up the mountain, I called her again.

"Anything?" she asked, worry clouding her voice.

"Nothing yet," I said. "I wish we could call in some pros. I don't like this one bit."

"Let's just hope we're right and that whoever took him won't hurt him."

"Yeah," I said, then lost service as the road wound through a holler surrounded on both sides by sheer rock faces. I called back a couple of minutes later, but the call went straight to voicemail.

The trailer was just as I'd left it. The Caddy and the Toyota pickup hadn't moved since we'd left. I glanced at the tire tracks as I walked by to see if the vehicles had gone and come back. Nope. I walked up onto the porch and knocked on the door. Hog opened it almost immediately and beckoned me in.

"How's the recording going?" I asked as I wiped my feet on the mat inside the door.

"Takes longer than I thought it would," said Hog. "We're more than half finished, though. Noylene keeps getting up to have a smoke."

"Nervous energy," I said.

"Yeah," said Hog. "C'mon in."

He ushered me into the dining room, where stacks of hundred dollar bills were placed around the table. Noylene was sitting at a chair, a lit cigarette hanging from her lips, diligently copying the number of each bill onto a yellow legal pad with an old half-finished yellow pencil that had been sharpened with a penknife. The knife was on the table beside her, open, and a small trash can was at her knee. She saw me looking at it.

"Daddy gave me that knife when I was a knee-high," she said. "Mother-of-pearl handle. Taught me how to whittle. I couldn't give it to D'Artagnan. That boy would have cut his thumb off with it. I was thinking Rahab might like it someday. For just a little sprout, he's clever with his hands."

I took the chair next to her. Hog sat down across from me. Noylene finished copying the serial number from the bill in her hand, placed it in a stack to her left, and took a new bill from the pile in front of her.

"Thought you gave up smoking," I said.

"Yeah, well, I've taken it back up," Noylene said.

"Want me to help with this?" Not waiting for an answer, I reached for another pad on the table.

She took a long drag. "Sure," she finally answered, then blew a puff of blue smoke up into the ceiling fan.

* * *

An hour later, we'd finished. I looked at my watch. 1:28. "Want me to stick around?" I asked.

"We'll call you," said Hog. "Soon as we hear from the scum that took our boy."

Noylene was bundling the bills back into fifty-bill stacks using thick rubber bands that had been piled up in the middle of the table. Fifteen stacks. The entire amount would fit in a small plastic grocery bag and wouldn't even weigh two pounds.

"Not to be nosey," I said, "and this is just for the sake of the investigation, but how much could you two have come up with if you had to? Cash, I mean."

"Why do you want to know?" asked Noylene, her eyes narrow.

"If the kidnappers asked for a specific amount, maybe they knew how much you had on hand."

Noylene looked over at Hog and he nodded. "Makes sense," he said. "This is just between us?"

"Of course."

"This about taps us in the cash-on-hand department. There's more in a few banks around the area, but it would take us a day to round it up. And we have some gold ... "

I held up a hand to stop him. "That'll do. Can you think of anyone who might have known or found out how much y'all had on hand?"

Noylene shook her head. Hog looked thoughtful, then said, "Nope."

"We don't tell our business," Noylene said. "Don't talk about it, don't cogitate, don't speculate."

"I get it," I said, "but it sounds as though someone found out."

* * *

I left the property and took some time driving the roads that fringed Quail Ridge. There weren't many, and I didn't see anything that might be considered out of the ordinary. Feeling dumb as a stump and saying a silent prayer for Rahab, I went back to town.

Chapter 15

"Meg's called three times," said Nancy. She was sitting at her computer, monitoring Noylene's phone. Dave was sitting at the other desk chair, the one that might fall over backwards if you leaned the wrong way.

"I've been out of range," I said. I shrugged off my jacket and laid it on the counter.

"No, your ringer is off," said Nancy.

"How do you know?"

"Check it," she said.

I pulled out my phone, looked at it, then surreptitiously clicked the mute button back to ring.

"Nope, it's fine," I said.

"Slyly done," said Nancy. "You know, you should be a spy or something."

"Any news on Rahab?" asked Dave.

"No contact since I left the trailer. I helped them finish copying the serial numbers. That was about forty-five minutes ago. I was hoping the kidnapper would call while I was there. No luck."

"Maybe they're watching the place," said Nancy. "Could do it from almost anywhere up there. You know, the note said don't contact the police. Maybe they saw your truck."

"Maybe," I conceded. "I doubt it, though. We think it's just one person and, if we're right, they're going to have their hands full with a two year old."

"Call Meg back, will you?" said Nancy.

"I'll do it right now."

But I didn't. The door to the station opened and Muffy LeMieux came in, her light green angora sweater in full bloom.

"Hi, Muffy," I said, forgetting about the phone call.

"Hi, Muffy," echoed Dave.

"Aren't you cold in that outfit?" asked Nancy, when she saw her.

"Oh, no," said Muffy, then added, "Well, these stretch pants are a little chilly."

"You look
wonderful
," gushed Dave, then realized what he sounded like, and said in a serious tone, "I mean, that sweater really suits you, Miss LeMieux."

"Thanks, Dave. You're a real sweetie!" Muffy squeaked, then turned her attention to me. "Hayden, can I talk to you for just a minute? You know, alone?"

"Hang on!" barked Nancy, typing furiously on her computer keyboard. "Noylene's phone is ringing!"

Dave and I quickly huddled over her shoulder and peered at the monitor.

"Someone answered it," said Nancy. Her fingers flew over the keys. "The call's coming from a cell phone," she said, scrolling down the page, looking at screen after screen quicker than I could make heads or tales out of any of it. "Dammit! No GPS chip. Must be one of those cheap, disposable ones."

"Can we listen in?" I asked.

Nancy hit a button and Hog's voice came across the computer speakers. "Yessir, I have the money. Let me talk to Rahab."

"I'm recording the call," hissed Nancy.

A moment later a baby's voice came jabbering across the lines. I couldn't make out anything he said, but apparently Hog was satisfied and gave a nine digit number to the caller.

"Oh, jeeze!" I said. "Did Hog just give the kidnapper a cell number?"

"Sounded like it," Nancy agreed. "Wait. They've hung up."

"Bring up the recording," I said.

Nancy hit a few keys, then we heard a voice, a
male
voice, say, "Hogmanay McTavish, do you know why I'm calling you?"

"Yes."

"Give me your cell phone number."

"Not yet. I want to talk to my boy."

"You have the money?"

"Yessir, I have the money. Let me talk to Rahab."

A pause, then some baby talk, then Brother Hog repeating the nine digit number, then a click.

"Call them back," I said, but Nancy was already dialing. "Tell them to wait for us until we get there."

Nancy listened for a few moments. "No answer," she finally said.

"Oh, my God!" said Muffy, her mouth open in a little "o." "Is this a kidnapping?"

"Muffy," I said, "not a word to anyone."

"Of course not!"

"Let's go, Nancy," I said, pulling my jacket back on. "Dave, wait here. Call if you hear anything."

On the fast trip up to Quail Ridge, Nancy said, "That was a man's voice."

"Sounded like it to me, too," I said. "We'll listen to it again when we get back. Could have been a woman with a low range. Obviously, whoever it was would try to disguise their voice."

"Yeah. Especially if it was someone in town we might recognize."

We were back up at the property in fifteen minutes. I swung into the entrance, spraying gravel in all directions, then floored the old Chevy up the rutted driveway. When we were in view of the trailer, we could see that Noylene's truck was gone.

I skidded to a stop, and Nancy and I were both out of the cab and up the steps in two shakes. Nancy banged on the door with the flat of her hand. No answer. She banged again, hard.

"Noylene," I called. "Answer the door!"

We heard footsteps, then the door opened and Noylene looked out at us with red-rimmed eyes.

"Where's Hog?" I asked.

"He went to get our boy back."

"You know where he went, Noylene?" Nancy said.

"No, not exactly. Whoever it was called his cell and said for him to start driving. They'd call him again and give him directions."

"And he took the money with him?" Nancy asked.

"Yes, he did," said Noylene. A tear escaped and ran down her cheek. She brushed it away with the back of her hand. "Said I wasn't to come. Just Hog."

I said, "I'm sure everything will work out fine. May we come in and wait with you?"

Noylene stepped back away from the door and we went in. The house was the same as I'd left it, except for the dining room table. The cash was gone and the three yellow legal pads were stacked and pushed to the far edge.

"Y'all want some lemonade?" Noylene asked.

"I'll have some," said Nancy.

"No, thanks," I said, then pulled out my phone to call Meg. Voicemail again. I didn't leave a message.

"We'll take those legal pads, okay?" I asked, nodding toward the table. "We can put those serial numbers in the system and hopefully catch someone spending one of those bills."

"Sure, I guess." Noylene disappeared into the kitchen. We went into the living room and sat down, Nancy on the long sofa, me in Hog's recliner.

My phone rang and it was Meg. "I'm over at Noylene's," I told her. "Hog's taken the ransom money and gone to get Rahab. He didn't wait for us."

"Call me," she said. "Call me as soon as you know anything."

"I will."

* * *

An hour later we heard the little Toyota truck backfiring up the driveway. Noylene ran to the door, flung it open, and practically flew down the steps and into the driveway. A few moments later, before the truck had even fully stopped, she yanked the passenger door open, pulled little Rahab from his car seat, and began smothering him with kisses. He babbled happily and used both his hands to pull Noylene's hair.

Hog got out of the truck and smiled at Noylene, then at us, obviously proud of himself.

"You should have waited for us," said Nancy. "We might have caught the kidnappers if you'd waited."

"Couldn't chance it," said Hog. "But now that Rahab's back, you go ahead and catch them."

"At least find out who they are," said Noylene. "I'd like to speak with them." Her face was hard.

"You didn't see them?" I asked Hog.

"Nope. I dropped the sack of money in the middle of Turtle Branch Road like he told me."

"You had phone service?" I asked. "The whole time?"

Hog looked thoughtful. "Yes. Yes, I did. Never lost it, not even once, and I was on the phone with him the whole time."

Nancy and I looked at each other. "Must have plotted it out pretty carefully," she said to me, then to Hog, "Who's your phone service provider? I lose my connection up here all the time."

"Carolina West Wireless."

Nancy pulled out a pad from her breast pocket and jotted the information down. Noylene carried Rahab up the steps, onto the porch, and into the house, all the while talking softly into his ear.

"Tell us the rest," I said to Hog.

"Like I told you, I dropped the sack of money in the middle of Turtle Branch Road just where he told me to. There's hardly anybody that drives that road. It's a cut through. No houses on it."

"He?" said Nancy. "You sure it was a he?"

"It was a man, I think. Maybe not, but I think it was. So I dropped the bag and he told me to drive real slow and I would see Rahab sitting by the road in about a half mile."

"And he was?" I asked.

"Yes," said Hog, now with a tired smile. "He was tied to a tree, sitting on a blanket, and chewing on a carrot. He even had a little stocking cap on. The rope wasn't tight around him, but he couldn't just walk away. Took a couple of minutes to untie him. The rope's in the back of the truck, if you want it. The blanket and the hat, too. None of that's ours."

"Thanks," I said. "We'll take it all. I sure am glad you got Rahab back safe and sound."

"Me, too," said Hog. "Now you guys find out who did this. Rahab and I have a tent revival scheduled for next week at the campground in Valle Crucis. I don't want to have to worry about someone kidnapping him again."

* * *

On the way home Nancy said, "What do you think? A man?"

"My gut says it's a woman," I said. "Everything about it says female from the planning on down to the blanket and the stocking hat." I paused, then said, "Still, there could be two of them working together."

Nancy squinched an eye at me. "I don't think so. Plus, we still have the Talltrees case on our plate. Who uses a taser? A man?"

"No," I said.