Dead for the Money (18 page)

Brodie moved quietly onward, hoping this experience would not be like the time she’d tracked down a rustling in the woods and come face to face with a skunk. She looked back to where Bud and Scarlet were waiting. She couldn’t see them, but she wouldn’t be gone long.

T
WO
PEOPLE
IN
LOVE
but unwilling to admit it is all very well and good,
Seamus said to himself
, but it doesn’t do a thing for a murder investigation.

Scarlet and Bud seemed destined to not say the right things to each other. “I don’t care if you’re my employee.” Bud stretched a hand toward Scarlet in a classic gesture of entreaty.

“I do,” she rejoined. “It would be a serious breach of professionalism to” —she struggled for a way to say it— “have anything personal to do with my student’s guardian.”

Bud struck a comic pose, pointing a finger at her. “Then you’re fired.”

The look of surprise on her face made him backpedal quickly. “I’m sorry! Bad joke.” He ran a hand through his hair. “You’re devoted to Brodie, and she depends on you. I get that, but I don’t see why that has anything to do with how you and I feel about each other.”

“As far as feelings go, I
feel
that you are less than serious where women are concerned. I respect you as my employer, but that’s all. If you fire me, there won’t even be that.”

Bud was hurt. Seamus was irritated. It was like watching Claudette Colbert in one of her brave-but-too-too-noble roles. Bud tried again. “I was serious about you, Scarlet. What took me away that night was unavoidable.”

She met his eyes and said calmly, “You were with a woman.”

“Well, yes.”

Scarlet’s careful reserve vanished, and her eyes glowed with anger. “You see? I’m not stupid.”

Bud calmed in response to her fire. “After this morning, can’t you guess who the woman I met that night was?”

There was a long pause, and Scarlet finally got it. “Do you mean—”

He sighed. “I’m getting ready for our date. Another five minutes and I’d have been gone. A knock comes on the door. When I answer, Callie’s standing there, looking gorgeous and caring and desperate. She says, ‘Hi, Babe. I’m your mother.’ Just like that.”

Bud took a long drink of the tea that was now barely cool. “It was like something hit me in the gut. Before I knew it, she was inside my hotel room, talking. She’s really good at that. She said she’d wanted to see me for years, but Gramps wouldn’t let her. She said, with tears in her eyes, that he’d tricked her into giving him custody and then totally shut her out of my life.”

“You were not aware of how he came to adopt you?”

“I was a toddler when my dad died. All I knew was that I spent more and more time with Gramps until my mother disappeared from my life. He never said a word against her, which is to his credit. But when Callie hit me with her pack of lies, I was unprepared. I had no idea what kind of person she is.”

“You believed her story.”

“Hook, line, and sinker. She said Gramps should never know she’d contacted me, and then somehow, we were talking about the fact that she needed money. Before I thought it through, I was promising things right and left.” He counted the promises on his fingers. “I wouldn’t tell anyone we’d met. I’d get her money to live on until she got back on her feet. I’d find her a place in Chicago so we could see each other. I was shocked when she told me how much she needed, but I had been saving.” He paused, adding bitterly, “And my mom needed my help.”

Scarlet looked out across the grassy field to where a yellow and black bird flitted over the tops of the weeds. A grasshopper buzzed nearby. Finally she spoke. “It was all about the money.”

“Yes. We left the island together the next morning and drove to Chicago. The whole trip, she was charming and funny and affectionate. I went to my bank and withdrew everything I had.” He sliced the air with an angry gesture. “I took the money to her, then went home and started calling around, looking for an apartment she could afford. While I was doing that, Callie was making a reservation for a flight to Cancun.”

Scarlet let that lie. “You didn’t think to call me and explain?”

Bud’s answer was oblique. “You have parents, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then you can’t know how it is. Your whole life, you’re the one who is different. Even kids of divorced parents have one who shows up for important events. You hear them talk. ‘My mom is so weird.’ Or ‘My dad won’t let me,’ and you think, ‘What’s that like?’ You want it. You want to be able to say, ‘My mom’ in that offhand way. I never had that.”

“You had Mr. Dunbar.”

“And I thank God for him. I really do. But I always asked myself: did he want to start raising a kid at sixty, or did duty force him to do it?”

“It might have been duty at first, but anyone could see that he loved you.”

Bud touched the bandage on his head, gently rubbing a spot that itched. “Yeah.”

“So now your mother has come back. What will you do?”

“I don’t know.” His voice was low. “She is my mother.”

Scarlet’s next question was timid, as if she thought it was none of her business. “You think her visit this morning had a selfish motive?”

“Oh, yeah.” Bud grimaced. “I could see the dollar signs flashing in her eyes. I’m rich, and she’s going to be my shadow from now on.”

“What did you say to her?”

“I told her I needed time to think about what I want to happen.”

Scarlet looked as if she wanted to say something but pressed her lips together as if willing herself to be quiet. After a moment Bud went on, “When I realized what Callie is, I felt like I’d betrayed Gramps, believing for even a little while that he would have been unfair, either to me or to her.”

“He would have understood.”

“You’re probably right, but I was still ashamed. I tried to forget the whole thing.” Bud’s expression brightened. “I did do one thing to atone. You had told me you wanted to stay in the States for a while. When Gramps needed someone to help with Brodie, I suggested he contact you.”

“You did that?”

“It didn’t take much to convince him, and of course, he checked you out first. He is—was—nothing if not careful.”
Except on the ledge that morning
. The recent loss caught him unaware and he bent his head, gulping down a lump of sorrow.

Scarlet shifted her legs, apparently shifting her mood as well, and brushed some crumbs from her lap. “Bud, I’m sorry to have misjudged you. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that you are Brodie’s guardian, and I am your employee. We must keep our relationship on a business level.”

Bud nodded, but Seamus felt his spirits rise slightly. He had gone from “Mr. Dunbar” to “Bud.” It was, it seemed to both of them, a step in the right direction.

S
TOPPING
TO
LISTEN
and then moving silently forward, Brodie went deeper into the woods, following the animal sound. She did not see the man, did not know he was there until he grabbed her, stuck a strip of duct tape across her mouth, and pulled a stinky, person-sized bag over her head and shoulders. Like a big nylon stocking, it pulled snug as it stretched over her, pinning her arms to her sides.

Brodie fought back, but surprise hindered her defense. Before she knew it, she was thrown to the ground so hard that the breath left her body. It was a struggle to breathe with tape over her mouth, and the fibers and dirt pulled into her nostrils with each inhalation made things worse. The man—she sensed that it was a man—reached inside, touching her body, and she sobbed an objection, but he only took her hat and one shoe. Searching her pockets, he located her phone and took that too. Once he had those things, he pulled at the top of the bag as if putting a pillow into a pillowcase, jostling Brodie farther down into the bag’s smelly confines. She tried to kick him away, but the motion hurt her cause and helped his. Once she was completely inside the bag, the man jerked on a drawstring, closing it and trapping Brodie inside.

Helpless now, Brodie heard her attacker move away, scuffling through damp, dead leaves as he went. She lay on the forest floor, bruised and terrified. The bag smelled strongly of fish, and not fresh fish, either. It made her stomach heave and her throat constrict in waves of physical nausea that added to her fear.

She listened, wondering where he had gone and what she could do to get away. She pushed against the bag, struggling to free herself, but the neck was tightly tied. Working one hand up to her face, she tried to peel the duct tape from around her head. There was no time. Footsteps approached. Grunting and wriggling, she tried to scoot away, but she didn’t even know which direction to scoot. “I made a little trail,” a voice told her. “Your stuff will lead them slightly astray.” He chuckled. “Maybe more than slightly.”

Brodie got it. The smelly bag hid her scent, and the things the man had taken from her would lead help in the wrong direction. Where was he taking her?

She felt hands lifting her and heard a grunt of exertion. Soon they were moving, her gut bent painfully over the man’s shoulder, her head dangling down his back. His breath grew labored as the heat and her weight taxed his abilities. He did not let it stop him.

The fear that overtook Brodie was not regular fear. The craziness she had dreaded and felt building inside her broke out in full cry. A voice inside her screamed shrilly, even though Brodie could hardly get enough air in to breathe. She thought it was the word “Help!” sounded over and over, like someone completely out of control lived in her head.

Chapter Thirteen

I
F
M
ILDRED
’
S
SCREAMS
startled Seamus, they terrified Bud. When she started in, he jumped to his feet, looking around as if the jack pines had gathered to attack.

“What is it?” Scarlet asked.

“Where’s Brodie?”

“Over there.” Her expression was puzzled. “She won’t get lost. She knows these woods well.”

“I heard a scream. There! Did you hear it that time?”

“I don’t hear anything.” She rose and stepped into the sunlight, looking across the meadow into the trees opposite. “Brodie?” she called tentatively.

There was no answer, only the hums and chatters of non-human activity.

Bud tried it, a little louder. “Brodie, where are you?”

No answer.

“There it is again!”

Scarlet shook her head to indicate she’d heard nothing. “I can’t get a direction.” Bud pointed. “You go that way. I’ll come around and meet you.” He started off before he’d finished speaking.

They circled the glade, calling from time to time and getting no response. When they came together on the opposite side at the last place they’d seen Brodie, they entered the woods together. A short distance in, they found the plastic jar, set carefully on the ground alongside the pad of paper. Brodie had listed twelve spiders she’d found, sometimes adding a
2
to indicate a second find of the same type.

Bud peered ahead, where the thick foliage obscured their view and shut out most of the afternoon sunlight. “She went on from here without the jar.”

“Maybe she saw a deer or something.”

They separated again, heading into the woods at a widening angle. Bud called, “Anything?”

“No.” Scarlet’s voice held a note of fear as she returned to meet him. “Did you hear it again?”

“No. But there are some leaves disturbed over there, like a struggle.”

“You think someone dragged her off?”

“What other explanation is there?”

“But why?” Scarlet looked around anxiously.

Bud did not say it, but Seamus heard his thought.
Money
.

They returned to the picnic spot, hoping Brodie would be there waiting. When she was not, Bud called the house to ask Shelley if she’d returned there. Shelley went outside to ask Briggs if he’d seen the girl. As he waited, Bud’s muscles were so tense that Seamus felt constricted, like a bow string drawn to its maximum.

“Who knew we were coming to this spot?”

Scarlet took a long time to reply. “Just the people in the house.”

Bud took a mental step back, letting out a breath and trying to quell his rising panic. “Could she be hiding, trying to scare us?”

Scarlet brushed a hand over her forehead as if to banish such thoughts. “Never. Brodie is sad, and she is concerned about what will happen to her now that Mr. Dunbar is gone. But she would never worry me—us—by running off.”

Bud recalled a time when Brodie had stayed in a tree for hours because Arlis made her eat stewed carrots. This did not feel like the time to bring that up. “Okay. Either she’s badly hurt or someone took her.” He turned, surveying the circle of trees. “Those are the only possibilities.”

“Maybe she decided to—” Scarlet couldn’t finish. She could think of no reason Brodie would go off without telling them. “What should we do?”

Bud pulled out his phone. “First, we get help to look for her.”

A
T
TIMES
, the man who carried Brodie over his shoulder had to stop to rest. Once he even set her down on the ground, but she could do nothing, tied inside the bag like a cat about to be drowned. She could hear him panting and felt the dampness of his sweat as he labored through the heat. She sensed that when he set her down, he stretched his muscles, easing the places where her weight rested. After a few minutes, he hefted her onto his shoulder again, and the trek continued. They were moving through woods; she could tell from the branches that smacked her legs and brushed against her head. Unable to raise her arms to protect herself, she burrowed her face into the man’s back to keep from losing an eye.

It seemed like hours that they traveled this way, but the last part was the worst. Her captor started down an incline so steep that in no time he was sliding as much as he walked. Brodie felt even more helpless than before, certain he would drop her in his struggle to remain on his feet. If he did, she would roll down the slope, banging into trees and ending up—where else but in the waters of the lake? There she would drown, unable to keep herself afloat in this stupid bag. And Brodie realized, after days of wishing the opposite, that she really did not want to die.