Scared Stiff (14 page)

“In Mexico, though. No way we're gonna be able to stay around here after this next job goes down. We'd never be able to trust Sophie Van Huler even if we paid her off and she took it.”

“Think about the money. Everybody likes money,” Packard said with exaggerated patience.

I'd had to start breathing again, and my chest hurt.

Zimmer laughed. “Even you, Packard, huh? Me, I been on the streets all my life, never learned a trade or nothing except jockeying a truck. Lived by my wits.”

I made a bet with myself that he didn't have enough wit to live on very well, but I was still scared of him. I kept a hand on Kenny's shoulder, hoping he wouldn't say or do anything to give us away.

“But you,” Zimmer went on, “you got a good legitimate job. Insurance adjusters get to dress up nice, drive a good car, live in a nice house. I
live in the cab of a truck. Me and my sleeper, that's it. Anybody can see
I
need money, but
you
can't be hurting that bad for cash.”

The man called Packard—I'd figured out now he must be the one with the balding head and the gold-rimmed glasses—spoke in a voice that barely carried to where I was hiding.

“You're not the only one who's going to have to leave the country, and it takes cash to do that. If Sophie hadn't stumbled into it, overheard that tape and filched it before it could be erased, we wouldn't have come to the end of a good thing. Too bad we didn't find out sooner where Sophie's kids are.”

Tape? I thought, confused. What tape?

Kenny twisted his head to look up at me, and I put a finger on my lips. I jumped when something touched me from behind, but it was only Julie. Her eyes were big and scared as she stood beside me in the back doorway to the laundry room, listening, too. I glanced inside, and saw that Connie was gone, supposedly to find me.

Kenny's whisper wafted to us in the quiet. “What are they going to do?”

I shook my head to urge him to keep still. If
they said anything more, I needed to hear it, and I sure didn't want
them
to hear
us.

The smell of the cigarette was very strong on the warm, unmoving air. There was a long silence, while my nose itched and I hoped I wasn't going to sneeze.

Finally Zimmer said, “I'll be glad when this is over. The whole mess is making me nervous.”

Packard was beginning to sound irritated. “I don't think this is the right game for you, Zimmer. If you hadn't made mistakes, there wouldn't be anything to be nervous about.”

“Don't blame me,” Zimmer protested. “Blame Cranston. He's the one who got careless, who thought Sophie was too dumb to worry about.”

Cranston! My chest felt ready to explode. Cranston was the dispatcher at E & F Trucking! What was going on?

“I never figured on kidnapping,” Zimmer said. “It was just supposed to be simple, setting up to hijack some valuable loads and sell 'em, and let your insurance company pick up the tab for the trucking companies. You said you'd been
doing it for years, and if we didn't get too greedy your bosses wouldn't get suspicious because there are always some hijackings. You said Van Huler was stupid, but he was smart enough to figure out he was set up when Bones bought him a steak dinner to keep him away from his rig long enough to give me a chance to get his trailer unhooked. If Van keeps poking around—”

“Once we get his kids, he won't poke anymore,” Packard said, still softly and coldly. “You talk too much, Zimmer.”

No, keep talking,
I thought desperately, but it had already registered that Ma must still be all right, and that Zimmer and someone called Bones had hijacked Pa's load, and Pa was innocent.

“Nobody to hear us now,” Zimmer said defensively. “Makes me twitch, to just sit here and wait. What if old man Svoboda can't be threatened any better than Sophie? Then what? Do we shoot him or what? You got money, you could run right now, but
I
ain't got enough to go live in Mexico unless we can pull off this next job!”

“You worry too much. Once we get the kids, the Van Hulers will cooperate long enough to
let us snatch that last load, and you know what it's worth.”

Zimmer was still nervous. “If we get caught, it's a federal rap. Kidnapping, hijacking. We ain't gonna have to kill somebody, too, are we, before we get done?”

Kenny squirmed under my hand and looked up. I shushed him again, and he subsided, leaning against me. Julie was rigid and pale, and I suppose I looked the same way.

“I wish that old man would get back, so we can squeeze out of him where those brats are and get out of here. I don't like this. That park manager saw us, and that fat lady with the dog. They know what we look like. They can give a description if the cops come looking for us.” Zimmer sounded as if he were chewing his fingernails.

“Why would they? The Van Hulers aren't going to call in the cops while we've got their kids. Neither is the old man. Now shut up, will you?”

They lapsed into silence that was even worse than what they'd been saying.

My mind was racing, and I was sweating,
trying to sort out what we'd heard. Somebody named Bones had diverted Pa's attention from his truck while Zimmer did the actual hijacking. I was confused and scared.

We didn't dare move. The panel that could be swung aside in the fence was so close, yet if we tried to get to it the men would see us. There was nowhere to go in the other direction except onto the street, and if they caught sight of us out there we'd be sitting ducks.

Connie's voice made us jump. He must have gone past the front door of the laundry room without our seeing him.

“Hey, Mr. Zimmer!” It was so loud that it scared me, until I realized who it was. “I found those kids! I mean, I saw them, but they're too far down the street for me to catch up with them. They're probably going over to the bus stop to go to the movies downtown or something.”

“Where?” Zimmer demanded, and the ignition of the black sedan was turned on, so it drowned out everything except Connie's reply.

“They went that way, turned left out of the park here. The bus stop's three blocks over
that way. You might catch them before the bus picks them up.”

A moment later the men were gone, and Connie bounded around the corner.

“Now!” he greeted us. “Run!”

A few seconds after that, we were scrambling through the fence into Wonderland.

Kenny fell going through the opening in the fence, and he was sitting on the ground, trying to get his pants leg up to examine one knee. I struggled to get my breathing under control; I was gasping so I was afraid they'd hear from the other side of the fence if anyone got close enough.

Connie and I had been making guesses about what had happened to Ma, but I was stunned at what I'd overheard confirmed a few minutes ago.

Ma was still alive, but I didn't know if they'd hurt her or not. A driver called Bones had kept Pa away from his truck so the man called Zimmer could steal his load. It had sounded like it had been set up by the other man, Packard, who was an adjuster for E & F's
insurance carrier, working with the dispatcher, Bob Cranston. They'd been setting up hijackings, with other companies as well as E & F, and somehow Ma found out.

Not only that, they were planning a big job and they were afraid my folks were going to spoil it unless they took Kenny and me hostage to force them not to go to the police.

I felt like I'd fallen into a cement mixer and I was tumbling around inside it, my thoughts all mixed up.

Cranston had acted like he blamed Pa for leaving his rig unattended long enough for someone to get away with his trailer, when all the time he knew it had been a setup. He knew who stole it and that Pa was innocent, and he himself was getting part of the money when they sold a semi-load of new TVs.

And I had sent my note to Pa, care of E & F Trucking, telling him we were with Uncle Henry at the Wonderland RV Park. Pa wouldn't even get the letter, I thought sickly, because Cranston had intercepted it. That's how these men had known where to come looking for us, that and Uncle Henry's call to Cranston this morning.

I sat beside Kenny, looking at the scraped place on his knee that was oozing a little blood. “It isn't serious,” I assured him. “It'll stop hurting soon, and get a scab on it, and it'll be okay.”

I wasn't thinking about his knee, though. I was thinking how mad Pa had been when Ma asked if he had anything to do with the hijacking. Maybe she was sorry she'd doubted his honesty and she'd gone looking for proof as to what had actually happened. Or maybe she'd stumbled accidentally on some evidence that it was an inside job. If Ma had overheard a careless exchange of words between Cranston and any of the others that made her suspicious, she'd have been looking for the truth, I was pretty sure of that.

I was convinced by now that the papers she'd stuck in my notebook had been hidden there because the men who wanted them were right behind her; would they help prove Pa was innocent of the hijacking and that someone else was guilty? And what was this about a tape that was missing? They believed that Ma had taken it, and it was evidence against them.

Something hit the other side of the fence
hard, jerking me out of my speculations. Kenny forgot his knee, staring at the gray painted boards only a few feet away, as we heard Connie suck in a breath. “Hey, let go of me!”

“You little creep,” Zimmer said, and the menace in his tone was enough to give me goose bumps. “Thought you'd put one over on me, did you, sending me on a wild-goose chase after those kids? Where are they really?”

This time I didn't have to warn Kenny to keep still. His eyes were big and his mouth was open. He'd understood enough of what had happened in the past few minutes to realize that Zimmer and Packard were bad guys.

It sounded as if Zimmer had hold of Connie and was slamming him against the fence.

“How should I know where they are?” Connie protested when the thumping stopped. “They ran away, that's all.”

“Yeah, and you helped them and you know where they went.” Slam, thump. “And you better tell me quick, you little brat, before I bash your head in!”

“I don't know!” Connie howled, and I hoped it wasn't hurting as much as it sounded like it was.

I got to my feet and pulled Kenny up with me, wondering wildly where to go to hide. Connie was going to have to confess we were in Wonderland or Zimmer might kill him.

This time I actually saw the fence shake under the blow, and Connie's yell definitely was one of pain as well as rage.

“Where are they? I'm not fooling around with you any longer, kid, so you better tell me! They never went out on the street at all! Now, you want some more or are you going to tell me where they are?”

“What do you think, I've got them stashed in a cave or something?” Connie demanded. “Look around the park! They're gone!”

Again the fence vibrated under the power of a blow, and Connie cried out, “Run, Rick!” I grabbed Kenny's hand and ran.

Cave, Connie had said. All right, we'd go to the Pirate's Cave. He'd have to tell them we were inside Wonderland, but it would take them a while to find us. We knew our way around, and Zimmer didn't.

The trouble with the cave, though, was that two men could easily trap us there. You went
in one end of the tunnel and came out the other end in the same place. Besides, it was too far away, I decided. We needed to get out of sight quick, preferably somewhere we had a chance of getting out.

The drainage pipe, I thought, but that was too far away if they broke through the fence before we got all the way across the park. And where would we go when we came out the other end? There was nowhere to hide beyond the walls of Wonderland; there were only windowless warehouses, locked up, no one working there today. No telephones, no people, and on a Sunday, no traffic.

We were probably safer staying here, if we could pick a good place.

Behind us, as we ran silently across a grassy patch, I heard Connie scream.

What had Zimmer done to him?

The places that would have offered the most concealment, real buildings, were locked up. Was there any chance the telephone in the office was still working?

I headed for that, and when we got there I didn't hesitate to grab the rock Connie had
jokingly threatened to put through a window. Wonderland was being razed, and as far as I knew Kenny and I were in a life-and-death situation; it wasn't a matter of vandalism now.

The rock bounced off the office window in the pretty little castle the first time, leaving only a single crack from side to side. I threw the rock again, as hard as I could, and this time there was a satisfying crash. “Wait here,” I told Kenny, and knocked loose the splinters before I climbed through the broken window.

It only took a moment to determine that the telephone had been disconnected. No calling the police, then. I looked around for a hiding place.

“Rick!” Kenny's face appeared at the window I'd broken. “I think they're coming.”

There was nowhere to hide in here, I thought grimly. Only that tiny bathroom, with a door so flimsy it would never keep Zimmer out if he wanted to come in. He'd just kick it down.

I slid back over the windowsill, wincing when I raked my arm across a splinter of glass I hadn't removed, and I heard them.

“They're in here somewhere,” Zimmer growled from not far away, “and you're going to show me where.”

I spun frantically, jerking Kenny with me. The nearest thing to us was the Bumper Buggy ride, with the canvas tarp draped from the wooden roof, hanging nearly to the ground. We dove for it, wriggling under the tarp, and collapsed in the near-darkness there. My heart was making so much noise it was all I could do to hear anything outside for a minute or so.

“You broke my arm,” Connie accused loudly, not more than a few yards away, after I'd begun to hope he'd led Zimmer in a different direction.