Lie Catchers (29 page)

Parker shifted the phone in his hand to look at his watch. “I’m going over there, Harriet. Call Ivor. Tell him to meet me at the store.” He shut the phone, grabbed his gun and sprinted out the door, covering the distance to the back entrance in two minutes. The sight of the open door quickened his race to the workroom. Heart pounding and gun at the ready, he scanned the room, forcing himself to register the sight of his father’s body on the floor but remain aware that danger might lurk in the shadows. Where was Liv? What had happened to his dad? Was someone still in the store?

He listened. Not a sound. Was his father breathing?

“Parker,” came a growl. Ivor’s growl. Behind him.

“My dad’s down. Don’t hear anything.”

Ivor rushed past him, hitting the lights in the store, then scrambling up Liv’s apartment stairs. “Store’s clear. Going in.”

Sprinting to cover Ivor, Parker took the stairs two at a time and met Ivor exiting Liv’s bedroom. “She’s not here. No sign of struggle. Let’s check on your dad.”

Chet stirred as soon as Parker grasped his father’s shoulder. “He took her. Hit me. Took her.”

“Time?”

Lifting up his watch to his eyes, Chet groaned. “Two hours ago. Shit.”

****

Whap!

Liv came to, moaning from the sting on her cheek.

Bang!

Her head jerked sideways with the second blow; this time she felt knuckles. “Ah…ouch. Stop,” she muttered, straining for consciousness, struggling to see while she shifted her body away from her attacker.

“You scream, I’ll hit you again,” came a whisper only inches from her face. A male voice. Was it the person who grabbed her in the darkness while Chet lay groaning on the workroom floor?
Chet. Oh, God.

She smelled the sea, the acrid fishy smell of low tide. When she heard the rush of a wave, Liv nodded, feeling a sense of comfort that she was near a beach. Maybe she wasn’t far from home. From warmth. God, it was cold.

“Wake up,” the man growled, still whispering.

Liv blinked and her eyelashes caught on something. When she moved her cheeks, cloth prevented free movement.
Blindfolded. That’s why I can’t see and why his voice is so muffled. The blindfold is wide and tight against my ears, but he didn’t put anything across my mouth.
She wiggled her torso and felt a post on her back, her wrists tied together behind the thing. She sat on an icy, flat surface, the cold leeching through her jeans. Occasionally she’d feel drops of wet on her forehead. Snow?
At least I’m mostly under cover; something’s keeping the rain and snow off me.
Her legs weren’t bound, but they were useless to her, rigid in the freezing temperature.

“What do you want?” she asked, her teeth chattering with cold and fear.

“Everything you know,” he whispered. “Suspects. Dates. About Everett’s killer, the person who shot at you, and Tilly’s death. Everything.”

“I’m not in on the investigation. Why would they tell me?”

“You wrote the column. You have inside information.”

She bit her lip to keep it from trembling, “I’m writing about a 1932 murder. I—”

Bang!
He popped her cheek with his fist, bouncing her head off the wood post. Again, the horrible whisper. “You’re working with your brother and the Feds, you bloody bitch.”

Liv shook her head to clear it after the blow, tears streaming from her eyes and wetting the blindfold.

“I don’t know anything.”

His finger twined around her amber necklace and he twisted it until it tightened against her throat. “You and your fucking jewelry,” he said, wrenching it tighter with every word.

“Gagh! I can’t brea—”

The string broke, stones popping to her shoulder and bouncing to the ground. The snap of the necklace reverberated in her heart. Her first necklace. But he hadn’t been able to strangle her with it. That was something.

“Shit!” he yelled in frustration before he socked her in her cheek.

Moaning from the pain, Liv dropped her chin to her chest, pulling in deep breaths. When she felt the cold steel of a gun at her temple she gasped. At the click of the safety, she began to shake uncontrollably. This time, when he’d hit her, she’d smelled aftershave, a scent she knew.
I know who this man is, but if I let on, he’ll kill me.
Since he’d taken all the trouble to blindfold her and whisper his threats, maybe he meant to let her go. She had to play along. Parker would want her to tell him everything she knew in order to survive.

She cleared her throat. “Everett Olson was heading to the Grand Caymans with Susanna, probably to claim several million dollars,” she said, shivers making her voice bobble. “Tuck Barber was Everett’s friend as was Tilly, so they are suspects. They are picking Tilly or Tuck as Ev’s killer. Tuck as Tilly’s killer. But they haven’t written off Halley, Josh or Susanna, because they all have motive.”

“Evidence?”

“They think Tuck wired Tilly’s office and her home. Tuck figured Tilly was colluding with Ev to take the money all three had contributed to. Or Tilly was ready to confess to the Feds, scared that Tuck would kill her once Ev was dead. Whatever Tuck heard, he didn’t like, so he killed her. Sneaked a date rape drug into her, then forced her to swallow a deadly amount of sleeping pills.” Liv sighed, adrenaline waning and cold taking over her body. “I know the exact time when Tuck returned home the morning after Tilly’s death. He doesn’t have an alibi.”

When Liv heard a car approaching, the man put his hand over her mouth and growled, “Shut up.”

The car passed and quiet returned. They both breathed hard, a harmony oddly soothing to Liv. She straightened her back against the post and clasped her hands behind her, trying to get feeling back into her arms. “That’s all I know. All
we
know. We were using the Sing Lee series to flush out the killer. I was pretending to pull more dates out of my memory when, in reality I don’t remember anything more than I put on that chart.”

She heard him pace at her feet. Then he stopped, the quiet enveloping them once again, the sound of surf keeping time to her breathing. Liv wanted to assure the man she didn’t know who he was, but she remained silent, worried he would catch the lie in her voice if she spoke.
Let me go home!

To soothe herself, she closed her eyes and conjured the Hanson dinner table, set with the good china and silverware, wine and water glasses standing shoulder to shoulder. Liv would handle the seating arrangement. Parker next to her, she’d make sure. Ivor at the head of the table in her dad’s old spot. Mom at the other end, presiding over all. Chet next to Harriet. Maybe invite Mallen and Jenny. Ivor would say grace.

Liv opened her eyes to blackness and the soft surging of the waves. She heard footsteps in retreat, the sound of a car door opening and closing, a motor starting up, a car backing up and going forward.

“Hello?” she asked, praying no one would answer.

An owl hooted.

“Is this meeting over?”

The surf slapped against the beach, soothing like a steady heart beat.

She wiggled her legs and rocked back and forth on her butt, bringing feeling back into them. Then, pulling her knees up, she braced her back on the post and worked her arms up and down to get more blood pumping. “You bastard. I’m not waiting for you to come back.” She rubbed the knot of her blindfold against the post until it slipped off the top of her head. Blinking to adjust her eyes to seeing again, she examined her surroundings. She kicked aside a length of tarp hanging from the post to see hear the ocean. “Hello, Sandy Beach Park, I think.”

Wriggling up the post to a standing position, she pounded feeling back into her legs, all the time wondering how she’d get her wrists free when her arms, especially her wounded one, hurt like hell and her fingers were limp as sausages. Screams? Maybe a couple of nocturnal animals would hear her cry. Hardly any traffic on the east side of Sandy Beach Road. One car in say, half an hour. The sun had set around 4:30 p.m. and in the pitch black, she yearned for light.

The dining room table, candlelit, pushed into her brain, reminding her of warmth, her family, and Parker. And obligations.
I’ve got to help Mom in the kitchen; her knees can’t handle the strain.
She tugged against the ropes with all her might and felt something give, allowing her to twist her hands and bend her finger to hook a section of the binding. Gritting her teeth, she set to work on getting free.

****

“We drive around again,” Parker ordered.

Ivor shook his head. “We’ve been up and down every road in town and along the coast five times, Parker. What good will one more trip do us? We’d be better off waiting until early light.”

“Fuck light. God dammit, if only we had the benefit of a full moon. Instead we get this shitty light snow that makes everything look polka-dotted. If she’s out here, hypothermia will kill her, Ivor. We have to find her.”

“Why do you think she’s outside? Maybe she’s in a cabin or a boat.”

“The worst place for Liv is outside, so that’s where we have to look.”

“We’ve got thirty people out here, each with a grid to search.”

“And ours is the coast.”

“It’s too fucking dark,” Ivor said, slowing down at Hungry Point. “We can’t search every inch of beach and beachfront in the dark, even if we have big flashlights and I keep my searchlights on. I’ve called in a helicopter that will touch down at first light.”

“Too late. Too late,” Parker muttered as he peered into the night. Ivor was driving at a crawl, but unless Parker could get out and walk on the shoulder of the road, he wasn’t able to see much past the concrete. “We can’t find Barber or Halley. Cameron is supposedly with friends in Wrangell, but we can’t get ahold of him. So not only are we trying to find Liv, we’re searching for Barber, Halley, Nilson and Cameron.”

“It’s typical police work,” Ivor said.

Parker spoke as he looked out his window. “Why aren’t you panicked? It’s your sister we’re looking for. Why aren’t you guilty about how we’ve gotten her into this mess?”

“She smart, even smarter than I gave her credit for. She
wants
to help, and we
needed
her help.”

“She is something, isn’t she?” Parker’s voice caught. “But as you’ve said, she may not be up to fighting whoever has her.” He squinted into the dark over Ivor’s shoulder. “What’s that over there?”

Ivor directed the searchlight to his left. “The shelter for Sandy Beach Park.”

“When I was driving with Cameron the other day, I didn’t see that tarp hanging from it.”

“A shelter against the wind left by a camper?”

“Josh Cameron told me about tarps. Said they were everywhere. We didn’t see that one when he gave me the tour. Let’s check it out.”

Ivor stopped the car at the building and Parker popped out, intent on finding out what was behind the plastic screen.

“Liv?” When Parker trained his flashlight on the area behind the tarp, he pulled in a breath. “Oh, Livy. Oh, God. What have they done to you?”

Fear drove her into the woods away from Haugen Drive. She thought about hitchhiking, but figured her kidnapper might be in the car she flagged down. So she trotted in the shadows of trees and down alleyways until she got to a home where she knew the occupants. When she pounded on the door to the Ostersund’s, she struggled not to cry. Her face was crusted with blood and swollen and if she scrunched it up in bawling mode, she’d probably scare whoever answered the door.

No one came.

She tried the front door. Locked. Scrambled to the back door. Open. She walked into the kitchen, relishing the warmth and the familiar hum of the refrigerator while she searched for a phone.

Ivor answered on the first ring. “Hanson.”

“It’s Liv. I’m at the Ostersund’s. They aren’t home. Back door.”

“Five minutes. Here’s Parker.”

“Livy?”

She slumped in the kitchen chair, relieved by the sound of Parker’s voice. “I’m okay. He left me there, Parker, after I told him everything.” A sob exploded from her chest. “Everything I knew. I was so scared he’d kill me.”

Parker yelled over the siren. “You did the right thing, sweetheart. Are you hurt?”

She sighed, thinking her whole head must be misshapen from the battering she’d taken. Running fingers through her hair, she was surprised to feel it wet and flat against her scalp. From sweat? From the snow? “I look pretty bad.” Liv leaned back in the chair, the phone tight in her hand. “Keep talking to me, Park. I’m hanging on a thread; I can’t get warm and I can’t stop the tears from coming.”

“That’s okay, baby.”

The agony in his voice made her think of Bernadette. She remembered the look in his eyes when she asked him about ‘Bern.’ That day the magnitude of his pain was stark in his expression. “You said you saw her die. Bernadette, I mean.”

He hesitated. “I did. On a satellite feed.”

Straightening her shoulders, she said, “That wasn’t your fault and nor is this, Parker. A man beat me up, the bastard, but I’m very much alive. And I’m going to help you get the shit.”

“I saw the blindfold, Livy. Could you identify him?”

“I may not have seen him, but I heard him and smelled him. Trust me, I know exactly who kidnapped me and beat me.”

“Tuck?”

“Damn right. Tuck Barber. Pick me up and take me to my Mom’s then go arrest the creep. Once he’s behind bars, we’re going to eat the dinner Mom’s prepared. By God, he won’t spoil our lives.”

“Livy?”

“Um?” She raised her head from its resting place on the kitchen table.

“Unlock the back door, honey. We’re here.”

She turned to look through the window of the kitchen door, trying to smile at Parker and ease his anxious expression. But her face was so swollen, she couldn’t raise the corners of her mouth. What’s more, when she tried to rise from the chair, her legs failed her and her ruined hands refused to prop her up.

“Embarrassing,” she muttered to herself, startled when Parker kicked in the door to get to her.

Parker grabbed her waist as she tottered to her feet. “Thanks,” she squeaked and fainted in his arms.

****