Lending a Paw: A Bookmobile Cat Mystery (Bookmobile Cat Mysteries) (24 page)

Unsolved? The thought brought me to some semblance of sense. The mystery of my death wouldn’t go unsolved, not if I could help it. I had too much to do before I could even consider dying. I wanted to see the house of Green Gables, to track down the equivalent of St. Mary Mead, to find out if there really was a Zebra Drive in Botswana. Besides, if I died now, I’d never find out how the tangled love lines in the boardinghouse got untangled.

Time to stop thinking and start doing.

I shuffled over to a wall and put my back up against it, then slid down its rough surface until I hit the floor. Relax, I told myself. The only way you’re going to get out of this is to stay calm and loosen those muscles. Breathe deep. Center yourself.

My wish to relax was complicated by the fact that I could die soon, but I did my best to forget that singular item.

I rolled onto my side, my arms behind my back, arms that desperately wanted to be in front of me.

Loosen. Relax. Lengthen.

Don’t think about the odds of getting free, don’t think that he might come back any second, don’t think about the strong, sticky tape around your wrists, don’t think about the bag over your head—which smells as if it has been sitting on the floor of a barn for fifty years—and don’t think about how thirsty you are. Definitely don’t think about that.

Relax. Loosen. Lengthen.

The words of that long-ago ballet teacher came back to me. Long line, Minnie. Make yourself into a long line. Don’t you see?

Finally, I did.

I let my arms lengthen into a line of the longest kind. Let my spine grow long. Made it into an arch. And, just like that, the twin changes in my body let my wrists slip around my hind end and up under my knees.

Gasping, sobbing a little again, I rolled to the floor. Managed to pull one leg through, then the other.

I tucked my hands under my chin and held them there, relief singing in my ears. My hands weren’t behind my back anymore! I’d won! A battle, not the war, but the small victory thrilled me more than all my Christmas and birthday presents put together.

Then I got over it.

Hands in front of me were well and good, but I still couldn’t see, my hands were still tied together, and I was still trapped in a barn.

But though my wrists were strapped together tight, my fingers were free. I felt the bag that covered my head. Burlap, judging from the thick weave of the fabric. I felt around some more. A lined burlap bag, cotton on the inside, with a long length of twine sewn into the edge as a drawstring.

Twine that was tied tight with multiple knots.

I pictured a farm wife cutting a piece of cotton from an old shirt or dress, sewing it into the bag, cutting a length of twine for the drawstring, and giving it to her husband to use for carrying his . . . lunch? His spare socks? City girls don’t spend enough time on farms to know these things. What I did know was that small fingers are good at picking out knots.

Shifting around a little, I sat up and used my heels to push myself over to the wall. I was good at picking out knots, but it was a slow business. It’d be even slower because even if it were full daylight, I couldn’t see anything except the inside of the bag, but perseverance was my middle name.

Well, my middle name was actually Joy, but that wasn’t the point.

I don’t know how long I spent poking and picking at those knots. It could have been twenty minutes; it could have been four hours. Every so often, my hands would start tingling from a lack of blood flow and I’d have to let them rest.

Break periods I spent breathing lightly, trying to hear for car noises, for footsteps, for voices, for anything. When my fingers stopped tingling, I started in again.

The last knot was the tightest. Two, three, four, five times I had to rest my hands. Each time I rested, I wondered if I’d ever get out of there, wondered if I was wasting my time. Then I’d take a deep breath and start in again.

There wasn’t much choice. No one knew where I was. If I wanted to get out of here, I’d have to get myself out.

Fatigue was seeping into my bones when that horrible tight knot released. In a flash, my fatigue vanished. I ripped the bag off my head—and saw nothing. Panic flared hot. I shot to my feet and spun in a circle, searching for light. Any light, it didn’t matter, the merest speck would be fine, please, just let me see something, I can’t be blind, please . . .

I turned in a circle, starved for sight, scared beyond measure . . . and then I saw the merest speck of brightness. High up on the wall, through a gap in the siding, I spotted a star. I froze, staring at it, drinking it in, loving it.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

At least that’s what I tried to do. In my happiness at being unbagged, I’d forgotten that he’d taped my mouth shut.

With my hands in front of me and my vision assured, I was feeling strong and very, very angry. Fiercely, I worked at the tape. Hooked my thumbnails under the tight edge, pushed, didn’t get anywhere, used my fingernails, thumbnails again, pushed, felt a searing pull and clean air on an infinitesimally small portion of my face, felt exhilaration, scrabbled frantically at the tape, pulled, pushed, pulled . . . got a good grip a very good grip
PULL!

The hot rush of pain was eclipsed by my gasp of relief. “Off,” I said, putting my head on my knees and panting. “It’s off.”

I sat a moment, then let the tape drop to the ground. It was tempting to ball it up and hurl it hard as I could, but I was too tired.

Tired, but not dead.

Which was good, but now what? As far as I knew, my cell phone was still in my backpack, far out of reach. If my bad guy had been smart, he’d have smashed it to bits, on the off chance I’d get out of my prison cell. Speaking of which . . .

I put my hands on the floor and pushed my awkward self to my feet. Time to explore.

It didn’t take long. After I’d felt my way around the room once, I went toe to heel with my feet, rounding up since my shoes were maybe ten inches long. My prison was rectangular, eight feet wide on the short side, ten feet deep. The door was solid and its hinges were on the other side. I’d felt a window frame on the wall opposite the door, but it was boarded up.

There were no other openings. There was nothing in the room. I felt every inch of the walls up as high as I could reach and down all the way to the wooden floor. No hooks, no nails, no nothing.

I jumped, reaching high with my tied hands, trying to touch the ceiling, trying to find chain, a rope, anything.

Instead, I grasped a lot of empty air.

I stood in the middle of the room, gasping for breath, trying not to think too much about reality, because it wasn’t that great. In spite of partially freeing myself, I was still locked in an empty windowless room with no tools and no weapons. If the guy came back, there was little I could do to stop him doing whatever he wanted to do to me.

The guy. I stood straight and stared into the dark at the door. For a while I kicked at it and when I stopped from fear of breaking bones in my feet, it was just as solid as when I’d started my assault.

Then for a while I banged on the boards covering up the empty window frame. They were attached from the outside, so maybe I could knock one loose. The boards were wide and I was small and desperate—if I could make a gap, surely I could squiggle through.

But the boards must have been screwed in, not nailed. All my thumping and banging didn’t do a thing. Not one single thing.

Finally exhaustion took over, yelling at me that it was time to quit, that I should wait until morning, wait until it got light.

I sat next to the door, positioning myself for a quick jump up and a fast run should it happen to open.

I laid my arms on my knees, put my head on my arms, and slept.

• • •

My dreams were filled with the growls of animals in the dark and threats that I couldn’t quite hear. At some point, I twitched awake into the barn’s dim light. I’d heard something. . . .

The whooshing of bird wings flew past. “Caw caw!”

Blue jay? Crow? Maybe a robin? Bird identification was another skill I should work on.

I rubbed my face, felt the sticky leftover from the tape, felt the yuck on my unbrushed teeth, felt the dirt and sweat and general ick all over my body and in my hair. When I got out of here, a hot shower was the first order of business.

When
I got out?

Smiling, I mentally patted myself on the back for having such a cheery thought first thing after sleeping in the locked-up corner of a barn with my wrists tied together. Good for me. My self-esteem, which should have been at rock bottom, was, due to some miracle, doing okay. Now for the rest of me.

I pushed myself to my feet and looked at my surroundings. The morning sun didn’t exactly flood the place, but enough light was filtering in through gaps in the wood that I could see well enough. The door was indeed solid, the boards over the window were indeed stuck on tight, and the ceiling was indubitably out of reach. The only opening I could see anywhere was a gap between the ceiling and the top of the inside wall.

Hmm.

If I could get up there, I might be able to wriggle through, but since there was no way I could scale a ten-foot-high smooth wall, there wasn’t much point in . . . wait a minute.

The window. It was close to that inside wall.

If I could get my hands free, I could use the thin boards that framed the window as a sort of ladder. I could climb to the top of the window, lever myself up and out over the wall. An average-sized man would never be able to do that—the half-inch wood around the window would surely collapse under his weight—but this compact woman could.

The first part of the plan, however, might be the hardest of all.

I looked at my bound wrists. Thick black tape encircled each one, then wrapped around them both. Twice. It was thicker than normal duct tape, and it felt stickier. Duct tape on steroids, Rafe had called it. It’ll stick to brick, stone, stucco, or plaster, he’d said, and it was doing a fantastic job of holding my wrists together.

The result of last night’s inspection-by-feel of the walls matched what I saw now. No nails hanging anywhere to help me out, no screws, no hooks, no nothing. I couldn’t even find a good sharp splinter to help me puncture the tape. My bad luck I got imprisoned in a barn built to last.

I sat down and studied the stupid tape. It was just tape, after all. There had to be two ends, and one of them had to be on the outside. All I had to do was find the end, peel up one corner, and unwrap the whole thing. Easy.

Unfortunately, the outside end was on the far side of my wrists, making it the worst location possible for unwrapping. I could hardly see it, could barely even feel it.

I picked at the unmoving end and got nowhere.

A tool. My kingdom for a tool. My grandfather had always carried a penknife. My dad carried a money clip that had a bottle opener. All I had was me and the clothes I wore; shorts, T-shirt, underwear, socks, and shoes.

I smiled a wide, happy smile. Shoes. I was wearing shoes. With laces.

Bending forward, I untied my left shoe and pulled the lace through the eyelets. I grabbed the aglet at one end of the lace and pushed it up against the end of the tape.

Nothing.

Push. Push again. Push again.

Nothing.

Despair leaked into my formerly almost-perky attitude. The perkiness must have come from the unrealistic expectation that formulating a plan was as good as having it come to fruition. Sometimes I hated real life.

Push. Push-at-this-freaking-strong-tape!
Move!

Nothing.

I took a deep breath, trying to stop the tears, trying to keep on trying to get free. It wasn’t easy. I couldn’t think of any other way to get loose, so I had to go on trying. Because the only other choice was to sit in the corner and wait to die. And that wasn’t a true choice, not really.

Push. Push. Push.

Time passed.

Slowly.

The room heated up. Yesterday’s humidity lingered on. The sunlight shifted around, slanting now from the left instead of the right. There wasn’t a breath of air. Sweat stuck to my fingers, rolled down my face, pooled in places I didn’t want to think about. At least my status of dehydration meant I didn’t have any full-bladder issues.

Push. Push. Push.

I rested. Maybe slept a little.

Push. Push . . .

And then the tape moved. Just a teensy bit, but it moved.

I sucked in a breath. Maybe I’d imagined it. Maybe I was hallucinating. Maybe . . .

Holding that breath, I lifted my wrists to see. I hadn’t imagined it. I’d actually, finally, made the end of this insanely strong tape move a little.

I would have cheered, but a sudden urgency overcame me. The guy could be coming back even now. Just because he’d been gone a long time didn’t mean he wouldn’t come back. If he came back now, right before I escaped . . . if he found me . . .

No. That wouldn’t happen. I wouldn’t let it happen.

Fighting panic, I jabbed at the end of the tape.

Just a little more, a little more,
there
!