One Fool At Least (The Madeline Mann Mysteries) Read online

  “I’m envious,” T.J. told Jack. “My wife is off limits for another two weeks. Doctor’s orders,” he said. “She needs time to recover. Man, I never knew what women went through when they have babies, but it was like a battle scene in there. Trina screaming. The nurses were actually pushing on her stomach. I was ready to punch someone.”

  Nice to know that T.J. had no boundaries of discussion, I thought, as I dealt with the nauseous feeling that his description had raised. Jack and I had talked about having children right away, but I’d admitted I was terrified of labor. Apparently marriage makes you face all your terrors. We thought we might wait a little while for the babies. Maybe a long while, I amended in my mind.

  “How are you doing, Blondie?” Jack asked me, kissing my cheek.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Maddy. Look in my face. What do you see there?”

  I looked into his face. Jack’s eyes locked onto mine and some desire overrode my fear. “I see you,” I said.

  “Do you see how much I love you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you believe that I won’t let anything happen to you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He smiled, victorious, and sat back in his seat, still holding my hand.

  Well, I thought, that had diverted my attention for a good ten seconds. I reached down and retrieved the paper that Molly had slipped into my hand.

  It was a front page from a newspaper, dated May 20th. The headline said, “Cops Stumped in Flanagan Murder Case.” Two smaller headlines read, “Local Boy Reported Missing,” and “High School Scores Get Low Grade.” I skipped the high school story, but read the other two. Apparently this local man named Finn Flanagan had been shot to death in mid-May in the bar called Flanagan’s. It was after hours, and police had no witnesses to the crime. Flanagan had been found the following morning by someone in the cleaning company that routinely repaired the damage of the previous night. Whether or not the bar and restaurant would remain open was still under consideration by Finn’s family; the townspeople were apparently waiting on tenterhooks, because it had been the most popular hangout in town for the over-thirty crowd.

  Police said fingerprint analysis was too difficult, since everyone in town would have left fingerprints in the joint. The weapon had not been found. No money had been stolen, so police were also uncertain of a motive. Finn’s ex-wife had come forward to say that Finn had no known enemies, except perhaps her new husband, and he certainly had not killed Flanagan.

  The Slider story gave little more information. Joseph “Slider” Cardini had not returned home after a student party on May 15. The boy’s father had reported him missing the following morning. Police said they had not ruled out the idea that the boy could have run away on his own, which he had done before. Apparently young Cardini was something of a misfit. That was something to talk to Molly about. Libby had said that he was “good in spite of everything.” It was an interesting assessment, especially because the boy was dating her only daughter; then again, he’d saved her only son.

  A grainy picture of the boy showed him to be handsome in a James Dean kind of way, with hair that looked beyond his control, shooting this way and that in a sort of explosion of protein. His face, I had to admit, was likeable. He didn’t look like a punk, but like a boy that a mother could love.

  I looked behind me and saw that Molly’s eyes were already on me. She and Mike seemed to be keeping some sort of vigil back there. It was odd. Why would they be pinning their hopes on me? Obviously Slider was in some sort of trouble. Why else would my friend in the elevator have been sent with his message? And who didn’t want Slider “returned” to the police? Why? Had he really witnessed a murder? If so, would the Sheas be turning him over for assassination? I wondered, briefly, if they really did know where he was. If they all cared for the boy, they wouldn’t want to give up his hiding place, perhaps not even to Jack and me.

  I was still contemplating these ideas, for the moment panic free, when Jack leaned over me, looked out the window, and said, “We’re here, Maddy. We’re home!”

  He looked joyful and boyish; I remembered with a pang that this was the state where my husband had grown up, where he’d lived his whole life until the age of eighteen. I had never strayed far from Webley, Illinois, not even in college. I couldn’t imagine leaving my home and family behind; I was already itching to make a couple of phone calls.

  “Great,” I said. I clutched his arm, dreading the answer to my question: “Have we landed?”

  Jack took my face in his hands. “I’ll tell you right after I kiss you.” His lips met mine, and warmed them, and I felt the slow rise of heat in my entire body as Jack worked his magic with lips and tongue and a little nip of his teeth, and I began to feel as if the valium was surging back through my system. Finally, reluctantly, he pulled away, and said, “Now we’ve landed. You did it. It was fine. You were great.”

  Eventually we made our way down the aisle with the other passengers; Jack’s parents somehow ended up ahead of us, and Jack went forward to answer a question for his father; various Shea family members bumped up against me as we jostled toward the stairs. “Did you read it, Madeline?” said Molly in my ear.

  “Yeah,” I said back in a low voice. We were on the ground, but I still felt overwhelmed and claustrophobic in this little tube of an aircraft.

  “What do you think? Are there any clues we should pursue?” she asked earnestly, almost whispering.

  “There’s not much to glean from the articles.” We moved forward slowly as people disembarked. “More interesting to me is the fact that people are looking for him— people who aren’t the police.”

  “I thought maybe Slider was hanging around me,” Molly said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked groggily.

  We had edged toward the door; I could see Jack, who had been talking to his parents, going through the doorway and onto the stair attachment.

  I approached the door, trying to look back at her at the same time. “Molly, if you know anything you should tell your father, and the authorities.”

  “Well, it was just a hunch, that maybe he might be camping in the woods up behind our property. I’d been leaving a box out in this little fishing hut, with food and supplies and stuff. I didn’t tell anyone, and besides it was always still there in the morning.”

  “So your hunch was wrong?” I said quietly, glancing at the people behind us. We’d reached the front of the cabin.

  The flight attendant smiled toothily at me and prodded me toward the stairs, talking too loudly about how I should have a great visit and a great life and do a great job going down the steps. My first image of Montana was that it was cool, and fragrant, and so big and empty looking that I felt I’d stepped into another dimension. Jack had once told me that the entire population of giant Montana was less than one million people. I thought of that now as I looked at a vastness, an emptiness I had never seen before; even from the plane I felt something between loneliness and awe.

  Between Molly’s distracting conversation and the alien-looking mountains on the landscape, which made me feel I’d stepped inside of a postcard, I was not paying attention. The people in front of me had already made it down. I took a step, and Molly whispered in my ear, “The morning we left to come to the wedding, it was gone.”

  “Huh?” I asked, shocked, and my foot twisted under me. The next thing I knew I was tumbling down the stairs, ass over applecart, as my dad would say, and the only thing that saved me from a severe brain injury at the bottom was that my head landed on my bag, which was a lovely soft leather thing that my mother had given me for the journey. I lay there, my cheek cradled on the fragrant cowhide, trying to get my bearings. Jack’s family, I thought blearily, were going to think I was quite the loon. I still hadn’t recovered from the embarrassment of fainting at the wedding, much less my freak-out at the airport. Now this. Could someone die of embarrassment? I wondered as I lay there, listening to the sound of shocked exclamation
s and feet running toward me.

  Jack got there first. “Maddy, are you all right?” he asked.

  “Oh, I think so,” I said, trying to smile and stand up. “Ouch!” I cried, as pain darted up my leg in a vicious thrust. “Jack—my ankle. I think I twisted my ankle.”

  He did a quick examination, kneeling in front of me while I stood before him on one foot. He looked up grimly, his eyes squinted against the Montana sunlight, burning insistently through a cover of clouds. “It doesn’t look good, babe.”

  I felt the urge to cry. I was always somehow being clumsy or impulsive or crazy, or at least that’s how it looked to other people. I couldn’t help it Molly was whispering conspiracies in my ear, and the flight attendant was frightening me with her braying voice, and I hadn’t been paying attention to the structure of the stairs.

  Jack saw my expression, and understood me, as he always did. He stood up and slid his shoulder under my left arm. “Come on. Don’t even step on that foot, just lean on me. That’s it. We need to get you to the hospital, I imagine, get it X-rayed.”

  I said nothing; I was pouting. I vaguely heard Molly in the background, saying “Oh, this is all my fault.” Her parents were busy dealing with getting Mike off of the plane, but they were calling something to us. Before we got far, a different flight attendant appeared with a wheelchair for me; he and Jack settled me in, and then Jack was pushing me through the airport, to the rental car counter, where he kissed my cheek. “It’ll be okay,” he said softly.

  Jack hadn’t been home, except to sit at Mike’s bedside in the hospital, in more than two years. He was finally here, ready to embrace his family and his beloved scenery. He had a new wife to whom he wanted to show everything. He’d talked about nothing for months but the gorgeous landscape and the hiking trails and the mountains. Now, just as our hardy hiking was to commence, I’d gone and hurt my ankle. Would Jack think it had been intentional? Would I ruin this whole trip for him with my clumsy, ridiculous self?

  Jack settled me near a window and then got in the rental car line. I watched him moodily, feeling guilt and exhaustion, and missing our little hotel room where we’d made love and drunk champagne and I’d felt graceful and pretty and perfect. Idly I picked up a pamphlet which detailed the airport’s history. It was called Rankin Airport, I read, because Jeanette Rankin, a Montanan, had been the first woman elected to Congress.

  A young lady from the airline had come to talk to me; she implied, with many smiles and loving gestures, that it would be unfair and un-American of me to sue them for the accident, but that I would be granted many frequent flyer miles to help make up for my swollen foot. Like that sounded appealing. I thanked her, and she moved off, bowing and smiling, assuring me that an attendant would be by presently to personally wheel me out of the airport, apparently to make sure that I didn’t somehow somersault out and brain myself while still on the premises.

  I looked for Jack’s brother and parents, then realized they’d probably headed in a different direction, to the lot where their car had been parked for two days.

  Soon another man appeared, in a red valet vest. “Let me help you with the chair, Ma’am.” He smiled gallantly, displayed some nicotene-stained teeth, and adjusted my feet more comfortably on the foot rests.

  I looked toward Jack, who was busy with paperwork at the counter. “Well, thank you, that’s nice of you.” The man looked familiar, somehow, and yet I had never seen him before. I smiled gratefully as I settled more comfortably into the chair. This would be much nicer, after all, than limping along on Jack’s arm. No wonder the airport was concerned about a lawsuit, I thought. It wasn’t every day these things happened. No doubt they would be prompt with wheelchairs when people tumbled off their planes.

  The man began to wheel me along, saying “We’ll just get you to your car, then.”

  “Oh, I don’t have a car yet. My husband is still—”

  I paused, stunned, because the man pushing the chair had started to run. We were already at the exit door. There were very few people around, certainly none close enough for me to send a panicked message. I lost valuable time trying to process what was happening; I was halfway out the exit before the fear kicked in.

  “Jack!” I screamed over my shoulder.

  I saw Jack look up from his form, search for me at the window, then scan the room until he spied me, outside now, motioning to him as a blue Chevy pulled up to the curb. The man pushing me opened the back door of the car. I had tried to stand up and run, but the pain in my foot was a bitter reality, and I had only managed to say, “Ouch,” before the stranger lifted me bodily, tossed me into the car, and slammed the door.

  I heard the power locks click down as I struggled with the handle. I sought Jack, who was running toward the car as it pulled away. I reached toward him as our eyes met through the back window.

  “Maddy!” he called, his face white with shock. I’ll always remember him as I saw him then: his windblown hair, his half puzzled, half frightened expression, the hand that still clutched the car-rental form, the strong thighs visible under the legs of his jeans as he ran fruitlessly after the car. Ironically, in that moment, my pity for him eclipsed all other emotion. Poor Jack. He had so wanted me to like Montana.

  Chapter Four

  Jack, growing smaller now, was holding his hand to his ear and yelling something like “oh!” over and over. I finally realized he was saying “phone.” He was telling me to use my cell phone, something he’d recently bought for me in case I was ever in danger. I nodded, to show him I understood. I don’t know if he saw me.

  I felt in the pocket of my windbreaker, where I’d tossed the phone that morning. It was there, Thank God, it was there. Even if they took away the purse hanging over my shoulder, I would still have the phone. I felt for the on/off switch, and made sure the phone was turned off. I couldn’t risk it ringing, or even vibrating. If they heard it they would take it from me. I wanted my phone.

  Now that I could no longer see Jack, I turned to face my captors. I wasn’t surprised to see that the driver was the man from the elevator.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “Calm down, calm down. We’re not going to bite you,” he said, his eyes watching for his exit, a cigarette dangling from his lip. “Just a little change in plans. You threw us for a loop when you tumbled off the plane, but it worked out just fine. My brother here wore his old red vest, from his days workin’ here. He was planning to lure you away on some other snipe hunt, but this worked out just fine.”

  “You’re risking arrest. This is kidnapping. My husband got your license number.”

  “We don’t have a plate,” supplied the man in the passenger seat with a conspiratorial grin at me. He took a pack of Hubba Bubba out of his pocket and offered me a piece. I shook my head and watched as he got one for himself, shaking my head as if to wake myself up. The gum-chewing assailant smiled at me with avuncular charm.

  “Still,” I said. “They’ll find you. The make, the model. He’ll call the police.”

  “That’s why we need to make tracks, little bride,” the driver said. “Don’t you worry. They provide Slider, we give you back. Shouldn’t take but a few hours.”

  “And what if they don’t know where Slider is? What happens then?” I asked, looking bleakly at the landscape as our car merged onto the expressway, away from my husband. The sun had disappeared along with Jack, and the light grew ever grayer with the threat of impending rain.

  I looked back at the silent front seat to see the two men regarding each other briefly. I saw again the resemblance between them. “You haven’t considered that possibility?” I asked them in disbelief.

  “We’re not paid to consider possibilities,” said bubblegum, his jaw working.

  “Who pays you?” I asked.

  “Not your affair.”

  I sighed. These two were unbelievable. Who hired thugs like these? They were like someone’s bumbling uncles. I fought back a tear that threatened to break my compo
sure. I wasn’t sure if it was a tear of anger or fear or just plain despair, but I fought it back, and said, “Well, can I at least know your names, if I’m going to have to ride with you until your arrest?” I leaned forward, ostensibly to talk, but really to scan the controls. I noted the mileage and committed it to memory. There was a compass on the dashboard. We were traveling north.

  Smoky blew out a breath. “You can’t know our names.” He noted my gaze, took a handkerchief out of his pocket, and covered the compass.

  “Dammit,” I said out loud. My voice sounded petulant, like a child trying out a swear word for the first time.

  Bubblegum regarded me for a moment and then took pity. “We’ll give you some names you can call us, just to make it easier. Nicknames, like.” He studied the ceiling, apparently trying to think of an alias he liked, blowing a bubble while he did so.

  “How about this?” He smacked the driver on the arm. “I’ll be Sven, and you be Olaf.”

  The driver snorted and his cigarette, already precariously perched on his lip, fell onto his leg, burning a hole in his pants. “Ow! Son of a fucking bitch! Randy, you bastard, you made me laugh!”

  “It’s Sven,” warned Randy with a glance at me.

  “Right. Sven,” said Olaf, his cigarette restored. “And I’m Olaf. Okay. And you’re Madeline,” he said in a friendly way, eyeing me in the rearview mirror.

  “You sure you don’t want to call me Heidi?” I asked. They looked about as Swedish as my landlord Mr. Altschul.

  Olaf laughed. “You’re cute, Madeline. I told, uh, Sven that after your wedding. I said she’s a cute little thing.”

  “Wow, that’s great,” I said, staring hard out the window. There wasn’t much scenery to see; it was getting grayer and grayer, and a fog had settled on the road, obscuring the mountains. I had a thought. “Hey, just out of curiosity, if you guys are being paid to kidnap me, might you consider being paid more to let me go? My new family has quite a bit of money.”