Strangers (26 page)

“Okay, ladies,” she said. “We’ve got a jailer who’s not very good at his job. If Glynis could get up and walk, she’d have already figured out a way to get out that door when he leaves to get his second load of stuff.”

Magda nodded. Faye could tell that she’d already come to the same conclusion.

“We outnumber him. If he had any good sense, he’d have tied us up. If he
has
any good sense, he’s already worried about that critical moment when he opens that door for the first time tonight. What will we have in store for him? But we know he’s unbalanced, and he might have convinced himself that we’re all happy to stay in this cell and make babies for him. I say that Magda and I position ourselves on either side of the door, ready to rush him when he comes back. It could work. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Nobody answered, but all three women remembered the butcher knife.

***

Joe had fled, leaving Suzanne in the relative safety of Victor’s little house. Overstreet had wanted him to wait there until he arrived, but Joe couldn’t make himself waste even those few minutes. Suzanne was critical to their plan, so Joe told Overstreet to pick her up at Victor’s and meet him in Dunkirk Manor’s back garden. The garden shed had been bothering him ever since Glynis disappeared. Ever since Daniel had inexplicably locked it. He needed to search the shed one more time for clues, and he desperately needed to see whether Faye was in there.

Joe went straight to his and Faye’s corporate toolbox in the back garden of Dunkirk Manor and grabbed some boltcutters. Overstreet might need a search warrant to search the shed, but Joe just needed the right tools.

One snip, and the padlock was gone. Joe let his eyes adjust to the dim light in the shed. He saw that Faye was not there, and his heart broke.

He assessed the size of the space. It looked right. So there was no secret room in the shed where his wife could be hidden.

The sprinkler system controls on the wall mocked him. Those sprinklers had obliterated Lex’s killer’s trail. Daniel’s trail. Realizing that Daniel knew full well where the controls were, Joe wondered whether anyone had thought to ask the gardener about the irrigation schedule. Maybe it hadn’t been a coincidence that the killer’s trail was washed away. Maybe Daniel had simply stepped in here after disposing of Lex’s body and turned on the water.

Daniel had certainly locked this shed on the evening Glynis was kidnapped, after the police searched it, and it had been locked ever since. Why? The police had found nothing.

Was Daniel moving Glynis from place to place? That seemed dangerous and unnecessary. Maybe there was some other reason for the lock. Maybe there was something in here worth finding…

His eye rested on a towel-sized piece of blue tarpauline, wrapped around a pipe leading away from the sprinkler system. Lex’s body had been wrapped in a blue tarp.

Joe’s eyes scanned the shelves and saw a stack of multicolored towels, and another stack of drab brown coveralls. The colorful towels stood out in the drab, dirt-floored space. If a tarp—a full-sized, bright-blue tarp—had been folded and stored on one of those shelves, it would have shone like a beacon. The absence of that bright blue object would only be obvious to someone who expected it to be there.

Suzanne clearly had spent a lot of time in this shed over the years, arranging flowers and potting plants. Did Daniel decide she needed to stop those visits, because something had changed and he knew she would notice?

And maybe there had been other subtle changes. Maybe the pile of greenery in the middle of the shed had been moved or spread out to cover something suspicious, like the slightly bloodied spot where a murdered man was wrapped in a tarp before being dumped in a river.

Joe had killed a lot of animals. It’s not that easy to drive the life from a large, strong being. Lex’s injuries had included a terrible throat wound and a head wound that was significant but not lethal. He was confident, based on the smear of blood on its surface, that the broken celt had delivered the wound to Lex’s head.

The killer had left that celt at the scene. Daniel. Daniel had left it at the scene. Was there something else he needed to hide? Why was Daniel limiting access to this shed?

Joe pictured Lex, unconscious on the ground, as Daniel cast the celt aside. Or Glynis. Maybe she’d struck back at a bullying Lex with the broken celt and then dropped it as Daniel happened on the scene. That might explain why Daniel hadn’t hidden that weapon—he’d never used it.

No matter who dealt the blow to Lex’s head, seconds would have passed. Maybe a minute. And still Lex was not dead. Unconscious, but not dead. Panicked, maybe Daniel had picked up something sharp and precise to deliver the killing blow. This was the bloodletting that had left a great amount of B-positive blood soaked into the parking lot’s soil.

No physical evidence that Overstreet’s investigators had found at the scene explained the throat wound. Where was that weapon?

Perhaps it had left the scene with Daniel and his victim. Daniel was aging, but he was tall and still strong, and he retained a bit of the light grace of a tennis player. He could have hauled Lex’s body to its feet, bent forward, and carried him on his back, arms over his shoulders and feet dragging on the ground. It would have looked like a scene from an Old West movie, where a cowpoke was dragging his dead friend from the range, but who would have seen it? The route from the parking lot to the garden shed wasn’t visible from the street or the guest wing or the service wing or the kitchen or the dining room.

What would Daniel have done about the blood? Surely he would have gotten blood on his clothes.

The brown jumpsuits on the shed’s shelves gave him that answer. So did the garden hose and the drain in the floor where Suzanne repotted and watered her plants.

If Daniel had been lucky enough not to be seen by an arriving employee, he could have gotten Lex to the shed and wrapped him in a tarp to contain the blood. Most of the back garden wasn’t visible to people inside the house. Presuming Daniel moved quickly, he could have loaded the body on a garden cart and dumped it over the rear garden wall within a few minutes. It was only an okay hiding place, but the tide was with him. The shifting waters of the Matanzas River had taken Lex Tifton off his hands.

He would have needed to hose himself down and get rid of the wet clothes. Probably he did that before dumping the body, throwing them over the wall where the river had taken them. Did he do the same thing with the murder weapon? Probably.

But what if he forgot? Overstreet’s people hadn’t found a murder weapon on the river bank or wrapped up in the tarp with Lex’s corpse. Joe needed to remember that Daniel was not a hardened criminal. He had almost certainly made some mistakes.

Overstreet had said that his techs had found traces of something that might or might not be blood on the shed floor, but only traces. That tracked with the notion that the body had been wrapped in a tarp that captured most of the trace evidence. What other evidence might remain?

Joe’s eyes alit on the pile of landscaping rock. The first weapon, the broken celt, was made of rock. Maybe the second weapon, the sharp object that had destroyed Lex’s throat, had been made of rock, too.

He studied the rocks for color and shape and surface texture. They were mostly limestone, chalky and mottled gray. He turned the rocks over one by one. None of them looked dangerous. None of them seemed to have a history of murder. And then, hiding beneath a large chunk of limestone, he found a smaller piece of brown rock that was smooth and honed to a fine edge.

Joe lifted the big chunk of limestone from the rock pile, so he could get a better look at the sharp rock beneath it. He refrained from touching it, because he recognized it for what it was: a murder weapon. It was a chunk of flint with a vicious point, and he would bet money that its fracture plane would mate with the broken end of the stone blade that Glynis had wanted to show Faye.

If Suzanne had harbored any doubts of her husband’s guilt, this cold piece of rock should ease her mind. This was good, because they needed her cooperation if their plan to get Daniel out of the house before he could harm his hostages was to succeed.

Joe backed out of the shed, just in time to see Suzanne and Overstreet approach. He gestured for them to come in the shed and see what he’d found.

As soon as Overstreet had all his officers in place, they were going in. Joe intended to have Faye and Magda and Rachel and Glynis out of that place before Daniel knew what hit him. It was time.

***

Faye stirred from her somnolence. How long had it been since someone spoke?

She’d been thinking through their plan. She was positioned by the door’s hinges and Magda was waiting on the side that opened. Magda would be calling the shots on the timing of their attack, based on whether she thought she could get control of the knife.

Options for weapons of their own were slim. She and Magda had busted open a water bottle and crafted the sharpest shards of plastic that they could manage. They had pulled the pillowcase from Glynis’ pillow, and Magda waited with the pillowcase in hand. If she could manage it while avoiding the knife, she would drop the pillowcase over Daniel’s head and kick him hard in the groin, hoping to immobilize him long enough so that she and Faye could get Glynis and Rachel out. Faye, hiding behind the door, would help her restrain him in any way she could.

This was the weak part of the plan, because moving Glynis was not going to happen quickly. The best way seemed to be for Faye and Magda to each grab a corner of the pile of blankets where she lay and simply tug. If the door could be kept open and if Daniel could be eliminated as a threat, then they could haul the princess out of her tower on a litter of blankets and towels.

The effort of this might throw Faye into labor, but if having her baby a month early in the safety of a hospital was the worst outcome of this predicament, she could live with that.

There was an alternative plan, and Faye wasn’t sure that she didn’t like it better. If Magda judged that she couldn’t control that knife, then Daniel would be allowed to make his first visit as usual. Faye hoped that he would be lulled into security by their apparent docility. But as the door closed behind him, Magda would surreptitiously position a water bottle cap in the frame of the closing door. If Daniel were sufficiently preoccupied by transporting the bedpan, then maybe he wouldn’t notice the door fail to close completely. After waiting a minute to let him go someplace to empty the bedpan, then Magda might be able to get a grip on the slightly open door and pull it toward her. If she could tug it open, they’d make a rush for freedom.

This plan required Daniel to overlook the fact that the door was slightly ajar but, otherwise, Faye liked it a lot.

Faye’s eye fell on Rachel. Here was the fatal flaw in any plan they might make. If Daniel grabbed Rachel, then they would surrender immediately, no questions asked. And he knew this.

With Rachel’s safety in mind, the little trapdoor in the floor that led exactly nowhere…this little trapdoor began to look very different. Faye knelt beside it and lifted the door.

She squinted at the hole and she squinted at Rachel. Yes. The child would fit, with a little room to spare for comfort.

“Rachel! I’ve found you a playhouse!”

The child toddled over and Magda stirred, fixing a “What in the hell are you up to?” stare on Faye.

“Let’s see if it’s big enough for you. You’re getting to be such a very big girl.”

Rachel had grown so much, and Faye had grown so much in a different way, that she could hardly lift the child. Little feet dragged the concrete floor as Faye moved Rachel to the little pit and lowered her in.

Perfect. When seated, Rachel’s head was several inches below the trapdoor. There were inches of clearance around her in all directions, so she didn’t look cramped. The concrete floor, however, looked hard and Faye needed Rachel to be comfortable in this hole for an indefinite period of time.

“Glynis, do you need both those pillows? Could I borrow one for Rachel?”

“Of course you can.” Glynis lifted her head, so that Faye could take her pick.

Faye left the bed pillow for Glynis—she’d already taken the pillowcase from it—and reached for the square sofa pillow that was just the size to wedge into this hole. Its cover had a Moorish design carefully chosen to blend with Allyce Dunkirk’s exotic Jazz Age décor. Faye lifted Rachel out of the hole and jammed the pillow down into its bottom.

“Look! It’s like Aladdin’s magic carpet, Rachel.”

The little girl clapped her hands and crowed, “Want to get back in my playhouse, Auntie Faye!”

Faye locked eyes with Magda and they both smiled. This plan—convincing a three-year-old that she
wanted
to hide in a dark pit for an extended period of time—was ridiculous. But if it worked, Rachel could be invisible and safe while they launched their jailbreak. There was nothing more important than taking care of the child in this room. Children. Faye and Glynis needed to take care of their children, too.

That task wasn’t going to be nearly as easy as making Rachel think that her dank pit was a fabulous playhouse.

Chapter Twenty-five

More time had crawled past. Faye didn’t know how much.

She’d shown Rachel the trapdoor and told her it was her playhouse’s “roof.”

“Put my roof on, Auntie Faye!”

Faye had said, “Let me ask Mommy’s permission.”

Armed with Magda’s maternal experience, they had slowly dropped the trapdoor, then raised it quickly, despite Rachel’s pleas for them to leave it closed.

“Mommy likes to look at you, honey. We’ll just close it now and then.”

And they had, for increasing periods of time. Rachel had been in ecstasy over this new game.

During periods when the door was open, the women had scoured the room for objects that could pass for toys. An empty water bottle and its cap. Protein bar wrappers made of a glittery foil that Rachel loved to shred and toss like confetti. The cough drops out of Faye’s sweatpants pocket, which Rachel had happily sucked on while shredding their wrappers. The paperback thriller that occupied her for a solid fifteen minutes while she removed its pages one by one, then admired its lurid cover.

Oh, how Faye wished she’d grabbed her cell phone and stuffed it in her pocket when she’d rushed to Magda’s room that morning. Granted, there was no reason to expect that it would work here, when it hadn’t worked in any other part of the house. But it would have amused her to burn up the battery trying. After that, it would have amused Rachel to open it and close it and poke its worthless buttons. Instead, Rachel had to be satisfied with shredding stuff and demanding that Faye lower her “roof.”

It was critical that Rachel be in her hole and out of sight when Daniel arrived, but no one knew when that would be. Glynis was of the generation who used their cell phones for timepieces, so she wore no watch. Her cell phone had been abandoned on the floorboard of her car, leaving her floating free in time for her entire period of captivity. She couldn’t tell them when to expect Daniel, other than to say that it was late at night.

The group could, however, infer when he might come. All three women knew the schedule at Dunkirk Manor. Guests came and went freely through the house, starting at breakfast time and continuing until the front door was locked at eleven p.m. There was certainly no curfew, which would have been ridiculous for any business hoping to attract tourists, but guests were told to use the door on their wing after eleven.

The front door stayed locked until six a.m., when the cook and maids arrived at work. So it was altogether likely Daniel made his nightly visits to Glynis beween the hours of eleven p.m. and six a.m.—more likely between midnight and five, to allow a safety margin in case there might be stragglers or early birds about.

Pinpointing that window of time wasn’t necessarily a simple matter. Faye’s watch was on her nightstand with her cell phone, because she had been interrupted in the act of working in her bedroom on a Saturday morning.

Magda, too, had been interrupted while going about her morning chores, so she had no watch, either.

Rachel, however, was sporting a vintage-design Minnie Mouse watch, a going-away gift from her doting father. The thought of Sheriff Mike’s suffering when he learned that his wife and child were missing made Faye want to curl up in a ball. She’d made a pact with herself not to even imagine Joe’s reaction to the same news.

So Faye’s plan was to entertain Rachel, both in and out of her playhouse, until Minnie’s hour hand pointed to eleven. Then she planned to plunk the child into her hiding place, with the roof firmly closed. She’d likely go to sleep there, which would be a very good thing.

In the meantime, Faye and Rachel could practice a very important game. When Faye said “Now!”, Rachel crawled into her hole and Faye shut the lid. Then Rachel waited, quietly and patiently, for Faye to say, “Rachel…go!”

At this signal, the child stood, pushing the trap door open with her own little head. She crawled out of the hole. This was easier after Faye folded up a couple of towels to serve as a stepstool. Once out, she ran at top speed for the door.

“If I ever say, ‘Rachel…go!’ and you see that the door’s open,” Faye had instructed, “then you run through it and you keep running. Don’t stop for anybody but me or Mommy or Daddy or Uncle Joe. Or Detective Overstreet. You can go to him or any of his police friends. Then you tell them to call 911 and send someone to get Mommy and Auntie Faye and their friend Glynis.”

Faye was optimistic that she and Magda could occupy Daniel long enough for Rachel to make a run for it, even if they couldn’t get themselves out. Unfortunately, she knew that there was no way in hell that Rachel could open the massive front door of Dunkirk Manor. So she instructed the child to run as hard as she could for the guest wing. She wasn’t to let anybody there come near her. She was simply to keep running down the wing, hollering, “Mommy said to call 911!” and right out the back door.

It was hard to believe that Rachel might get this far without being recaptured or rescued, but Faye covered all the bases. If the little girl actually escaped the house, she was to find the sidewalk in front of the house and run toward town, urging everyone she saw to call 911.

Rachel looked happy, leaning against the wall of her pit and hugging her knees.

“Want a story, Auntie Faye! Or a song!”

Good. Rachel was giving her the option of singing something mindless, instead of forcing Faye to rack her brain for an acceptable story. Looking down at Rachel in her pit, Faye found her mind circling biblical stories.

Young Daniel in the lion’s den.

Young Joseph, thrown into a hole by his brothers and left for dead.

A song. It would be much better to sing a song. But which one?

A song from long-ago Sunday School classes bubbled to the top. Slavery was hardly more cheerful than stories of trapped children waiting for death, but at least the story of Moses and the children of Israel ended well. Unless you were a firstborn Egyptian…

Every time Faye reached down and bellowed out the low notes, “Let my
peo-
ple
go
!”, Rachel laughed hysterically. Maniacally, actually. So Faye, who knew an awful lot about three-year-olds for someone who had reached forty without reproducing, sang it again and again. And again.

“Hey,” Magda murmured in a discouraged monotone that worried Faye. “If you even sing one note of ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,’ I promise you I’m gonna slit my wrists with this broken piece of water bottle.”

Faye just nodded as she reached down into the baritone range and once again belted “Let my
people…GO!!!!”

But the song didn’t take up every cell in her brain. It left space for another sad story about people with no place to go and nowhere to hide.