Catnapped! (A Matchmaker Mystery Book 3) (16 page)

“Mildred?” Alyssa asked. “If she safe?”

“We have people watching her.” There was no mistaking the animosity in Tom’s voice. She wondered if it was directed at Mildred or whoever was protecting her.

Jane stroked her husband’s arm.

“We need to know which team you want to be on.” Gerald watched her closely, waiting for her response.

Alyssa closed her eyes for a moment, trying to make her decision from a logical, not emotional place. While she desperately wanted to be with the group focused on rescuing Pete, she thought that, considering her injuries, she’d do better working with the other team. “I’ll stick with the Michelman side.”

Gerald nodded his approval.

“Okay, let’s go.” Jackson jumped to his feet, unable to contain his nervous energy.

Behind her, Roscoe backed away.

Tom stood too and Jane followed suit, wrapping her husband in a tight hug. Over her shoulder, Tom exchanged a look she couldn’t decipher with Mauricio, who hadn’t uttered a word. Mauricio nodded.

“Wait!” Alyssa  called out before anyone could leave the room. “There’s one more person we should probably ask for help.”

The crowd looked to her expectantly.

She shrugged helplessly, before suggesting, in a tone that sounded a lot like an apology. “Armani.”

If Pete ever saw Armani Vasquez again, he would wring her neck. At least that’s what he told himself. Before he’d fallen under her crazy spell, he’d led a safe, predictable life.

Now he was threatening people who skulked around their family’s backyard, participating in ransom exchanges, and trying to keep the woman he loved from getting shot. Not to mention the fact he’d been dumb enough to let himself get kidnapped.

He once again twisted his wrists, testing the bonds that attached him to the chair he found himself tied to. Still tight.

It was too dark to see where he was being held captive. All he knew was that it was cold and damp and smelled like sweet dirt.

“Hello?” he called out.

He got no answer, his kidnappers having left him to rot in whatever terrible hole they’d dumped him in.

A vise-like fear crushed his chest, making it hard to breathe, not because he was worried about what might happen to him, but because the same thing might be happening to Alyssa somewhere. The idea of her being alone and afraid caused terror to course through him.

Save her
.

He yanked harder, but the knots binding his wrists didn’t budge.

A shroud of hopelessness settled over him. He couldn’t save her. He couldn’t even save himself.

Sitting at the dining room table, drinking more tea and picking at a slice of Roscoe’s apple tart, Alyssa listened carefully to Gerald as he explained what he’d discussed with Pete about Mildred’s statue being a fake.

“So maybe Pete figured out who the beneficiary of the insurance policy is,” Jane guessed.

She was the only one who’d stayed with Alyssa and Gerald to work their end of the puzzle. Everyone else, even Roscoe, was out trying to get Pete back. Alyssa wasn’t sure whether that was the way it had been planned, or if she’d scared someone off by suggesting they consult Armani.

“Maybe,” Jane agreed. “If we had that information too we might—”

The doorbell rang interrupting her.

“I’ll get it.” Jane leapt up and rushed away.

“You really think knowing the beneficiary might help Pete?” Gerald asked.

Alyssa shrugged. “It might. It’s not like we have anything else to go on.”

“Oh contrare,” a woman trilled.

“Au contrair,” Alyssa corrected as Armani limped into the room, Jane following behind.

“You say ‘au,’ I say ‘oh,’” the crazy psychic teased. “Either way, you’re wrong because you have me.”

“How’d you know I’d be here?” Alyssa asked.

“I have my ways.”

“I called her,” Jane interjected.

“You called her?” Alyssa moaned, dropping her head into her hands.

“You’re the one who said she might help,” Jane reminded her. “And she brought a friend.” She beckoned someone else into the room.

“Tara!” Gerald smiled.

“Daredevil!” She grinned back and hurried over to high-five him. “Hell of a job you did driving in that park.”

“Apple pie!” Armani yelled excitedly. “I love apple pie.”

“It’s a tart,” Jane corrected mildly.

“Pie, tart, galette. If it’s fruity and crusty, I love ’em all.” Armani sank into the seat beside Gerald and extended her good hand. “And who might you be?”

“Shouldn’t you know?” Alyssa asked snarkily.

“Gerald,” he told the crazy woman shaking his hand. “So you’re the resident psychic?”

“I have my gifts.” She fluffed her hair.

“So she says,” Alyssa griped, her worry about Pete making her tone sharp.

“Oh she does.” Tara once again made a point of showing Alyssa her wedding ring.

Alyssa frowned. “I’m sorry.
Why
are you here?”

“I brought her,” Armani began rummaging in her oversized purse. “Harry, her husband, my boss, was none too pleased with me when she went home looking like a drowned cat.”

“Rat,” Jane and Alyssa corrected simultaneously. “A drowned rat.”

“She jumped in a stream to save a cat—she looked like a drowned cat,” Armani argued.

Alyssa was pretty sure a soft chuckle escaped from Gerald.

“I second Tara’s vote,” Jane said tapping her own wedding ring. “Armani does have gifts.”

Preening beneath the praise, Armani blew air kisses at her two true believers.

Alyssa noticed that Gerald was watching the whole show like it was the best entertainment he’d had in ages.

“Pick!” Armani commanded loudly, shaking a purple cloth bag in front of Alyssa’s face. “Pick seven.”

Deciding to play along to get things moving, Alyssa did as she was told and pulled seven Scrabble tiles from the bag.

Armani put them down on the table in alphabetical order. A E E H R S V

“Hmmph!” Armani said, peering back into the bag as though expecting to find something else inside it.

“Something wrong?” Tara asked.

“Not wrong, but strange,” Armani said slowly.

“How so?” Jane asked, leaning closer to get a better look at the letters.

“He picked the same letters and he figured out what they meant.”

“Who?” Tara asked.

“Pete,” Armani explained.

“And what do they mean?” Jane asked.

“Save her.” Armani stared at Alyssa intently. “Save who?”

Alyssa blinked, trying to dismiss the memories rushing her. The knowledge she’d failed before to save someone ate away at her, making her feel physically ill.

“Save who?” Armani pushed.

“I don’t know.” She swallowed her nausea.

“Are you sure?”

“Well, Brady wanted me to protect Mrs. Michelman,” she said slowly. “So maybe I’m supposed to save her?”

“You’ve got to pick the right door,” Armani reminded her.

“I don’t know what that means,” Alyssa wailed. “I don’t know what any of this means. All I know is that Pete—Pete…” She trailed off as two tears leaked from her eyes and coursed down her cheeks.

“What about me?” Gerald asked quietly. “Can I pick?”

The four women stared at him.

“I’m really not big on people
asking
to pick.” As she spoke, Armani gave Tara a strange look.

“Desperate times, desperate measures?” Gerald suggested.

“I don’t think—” Alyssa began.

“Please,” Gerald interrupted.

Slowly, Armani put the letters Alyssa had chosen back into the bag. “You’re a believer?”

“In you?” He shrugged. “The jury’s still out. But I believe in things I can’t necessarily understand.”

Apparently, that was a good enough answer because Armani held the bag out to him. “Seven.”

He laid his tiles on the table.

D E G I N R R

“Grinder,” Armani decreed.

“Derring,” Jane suggested.

“Red ring,” Tara murmured quietly.

Jane’s phone rang, startling them all.

“Hello?” she answered. She listened for a moment and then put the phone on speaker. “Okay, go ahead.”

“We need someone who can drive under pressure,” Tom sounded almost giddy. “Feel like you’re up to another act of derring-do, Gerald?”

The five people in the dining room stared incredulously at the letters.

“Gerald?” Tom asked sharply.

“Yes,” Gerald said. “Count me in.”

“We’ll be there in ten minutes,” Tom said before disconnecting the call.

“You a believer now?” Armani challenged Gerald.

“You have no idea.”

A flash of light blinded Pete as the door to wherever he was being held crashed open.

He squeezed his eyes shut against the assault. Blinking, it took him a few minutes to focus. When he did, he knew three things.

Three men in cartoon masks were watching him.

One wore a bird.

One wore brass knuckles.

One held a gun.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” the man with the gun began. “It’s up to you.”

“Did you steal that line from a movie?” Pete quipped.

“We should just kill him,” Brass Knuckles said.

“I should just kill you,” the gunman said, waving his weapon in the direction of the man who’d dared to speak. He swung it back toward Pete. “Who did you tell?”

“Tell what?”

“What you found out.”

Pete stayed silent, trying to figure out what they
thought
he’d figured out.

“Gonna play tough guy, huh? We’ll see how long that lasts.”

Knowing that his brother and friends would be looking for him, Pete sent up a silent prayer.
Hurry, Tom.

“I need to tell you something,” Gerald burst out the moment Jane, Armani, and Tara had left in search of applet tart.

Alyssa glanced around the dining room. They were the only two people there.

Gerald glanced at the letters still laid out on the table.  “I do believe. I do.”

Alyssa half-expected him to click his heels together three times. “What do you need to tell me?”

“It’s illegal.” He shook his head. “But I don’t see another way. It’s like…” He looked to the letters again.

Alyssa waited, not following, but recognizing that he was having some kind of intense internal struggle.

“Red ring,” he muttered, his gaze boring into Alyssa’s. “Mrs. M. is changing her will.”

“That’s the work Brady has got you doing for her?”

He nodded. “If you repeat this to anyone, I’ll never get to practice law. Do you understand that?”

His intensity sent a shiver up her spine. She knew that he wasn’t the kind of man who’d break a confidentiality agreement easily. She knew he was about to confide something important. “I understand,” she pledged.

“Mrs. M. is leaving ten percent of her estate to Mr. Burberry and his descendants, enough to keep them in caviar and fourteen-carat gold-flecked kitty litter for a couple of decades.”

Alyssa thought it was an odd bequeathal, but she didn’t understand why Gerald had begun to shake during the revelation.

“That leaves ninety percent to someone else,” he said slowly.

“Who?”

Stressed, he ground his palms into his eye sockets.

She leaned forward in her chair. “Who, Gerald?”

“Her grandson, Jacob.”

Surprised, Alyssa sat back. “Ralph has a kid?” The idea sickened her.

Dropping his hands from his eyes, he looked right at her. “No. Her biological grandson.”

“But she told me she doesn’t have children,” Alyssa argued.

“She
thinks
she doesn’t have children. At least, not one that survived,” Gerald explained sadly. “She was pregnant when her first husband’s plane disappeared. Almost nine months. The stress of his death sent her into labor.”

“And she gave up the baby?”

Gerald raised his eyebrows. “Can you imagine that woman EVER giving something up?”

Alyssa shook her head slowly. “So what happened?”