The Stuffing of Nightmares (The Mysteries of Bell & Whitehouse Book 7) (8 page)

“
T
hat does it
,” said Mabel. She’d been trying to get in touch with the bank for the past half hour, only to be given the runaround every time she got someone on the horn. It didn’t do, she felt, that she was the secretary of the mayor himself, and no one cared to talk to her. “That’s it,” she huffed. “They’re so not invited to the mayor’s ball! Not a single one of them!”

Mark was seated across from her at the kitchen table. They were running out of options. Even though Mark had had his dream about Mabel’s father, so far things weren’t looking up.

“I think we’re losing the house, Mark,” she said, starting to feel desperate.

“Maybe we should simply stop fighting,” he suggested, “and take Natalie up on that offer of hers.”

Their daughter had suggested they could move in with her and her fiancé for the time being. Until they got on their feet again. They weren’t the first people to lose their house and probably wouldn’t be the last.

“No,” said Mabel. “I refuse to burden my child with something that is not our fault. We paid our mortgage. It’s that banker who made the mistake.”

Mark reached across the table and placed his hand on hers. “Sometimes you just have to accept the inevitable, hon.” He was looking defeated now. He’d hoped against hope that his dream had meant something, but so far it didn’t. He’d gotten in touch with their lawyer again, who’d told him the only way to speed up the process was to appeal directly to the man at the top. The owner of Armstrong & Tillich. He’d also told him there was no way he would ever be allowed access. “If only we could get in touch with the big kahuna.”

“What’s his name?”

“Some guy called Brian Rutherford,” Mark said. “President of the Wardop Group, who’s the majority shareholder of Armstrong & Tillich. But he’s impossible to reach, of course.” He stared at his wife, for Mabel had made a strangled noise at the back of her throat. “What’s wrong, honey?” he asked, visibly worried. “Are you all right? You look… weird.”

She squawked again. The name Brian Rutherford had that effect on her. “Did you just say Brian Rutherford? Of the Wardop Group?”

He nodded. “Some young lawyer who lucked into being Peverell Wardop’s heir. The story was all over the news a couple of months ago.”

“But I know Brian!” she cried, nodding vehemently. “I know him very well! He’s—” She paused, suddenly remembering that she’d sworn an oath of secrecy about the Wraith Wranglers and their business. “I mean, he’s a good friend of Felicity Bell.” She hopped up from her chair, hope suddenly surging in her bosom and making her giddy. “I know him very well indeed!”

And without another word to her husband, she ran from the room and was out the door before he could utter a protest. She needed to talk to Fee—and set up a meeting with Brian. This could all be turned around, she realized, without much effort. Brian would understand what was going on, and he definitely wouldn’t want to see a member of the neighborhood watch committee, the inception of the Wraith Wranglers, be turned from her home.

She arrived at Fee’s house, setting a new record for the hundred yard dash, and when she rang the bell and no one answered, ran some more and arrived at the bakery in next to no time and stormed inside to find Bianca behind the counter as usual. She stumbled to the counter, placed her hands on her knees, and took big gulps of air, eliciting worried glances from Bianca.

“Do you know where I can find Fee?!” she finally huffed out breathlessly.

“Have you tried the house? She should be home by now.”

She shook her head, placing a hand on her spleen, which was hurting like hell. She hadn’t run like this since high school, and she sure felt it. “Nope. Nobody home over there.”

Bianca picked up her phone and pressed one. A look of surprise stole over her cherubic features. “Straight to voicemail,” she said.

Mabel smiled. “Do you know who owns Armstrong & Tillich, hon?”

“Is this one of those crossword puzzle questions? Because you know I’m terrible with crossword puzzles, Mabel. I never get anything right!”

“No, this is not about a crossword. This is about Mark and I saving the house!”

“Oh!” Bianca’s face cleared. “Have you found a solution? Did you get it through their thick skulls that they made the mistake in the first place?”

“Not yet.” She gave Bianca her most triumphant look. “Brian Rutherford!”

Bianca looked at her blankly. “Brian Rutherford?”

“Brian Rutherford.” She nodded vehemently. “That’s who!”

“All right.” Bianca stepped from behind the counter, a little wearily, and took Mabel’s hand. “Are you sure you’re all right, honey?”

“Brian Rutherford owns Armstrong & Tillich!” She gave Bianca a dazzling smile, wiping damp tendrils of hair from her brow. “Now do you see?”

Bianca thought about this for a moment, then the truth finally seemed to hit her. “Oh, you mean he’s going to tell the bank to let you keep the house?!”

“Exactly! Which is why I need Fee to set up an appointment with him.”

“Oh, but honey, that’s wonderful news!” cried Bianca, grasping her hands and pressing them warmly.

“We’re going to be all right,” Mabel said, nodding to herself. “We’re going to be all right.” At least if she could locate Fee and collar Brian, of course. But that shouldn’t be so hard. How far could Felicity be? She was probably having fun at the beach right now, along with her friends. She pushed at her hair again and twirled a gray lock between her fingers. “And what’s more, I’m setting up an appointment with Rita. I urgently need a new perm!”

R
ick was descending
the stairs into the Hartford Manor basement when his phone chirped. He instantly started fumbling in his pockets to retrieve it, Alice giving him the baleful eye.

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you to switch off your phone when you go snooping around the villain’s lair?!” she hissed.

He had to admit she had a point. As an ace reporter the number one rule he’d learned in all his years in the biz was just that: whether he was traipsing through the Congo on the heels of some tribal warlord about to massacre thousands, or wandering into Taliban caves in the remote reaches of Afghanistan, or even when penetrating the inner circle of the Mexican drug lord El Pacho, he’d never forgotten to switch off his cell. So why then hadn’t he been more careful now? He didn’t know, but he cursed his father for wanting to reach him at this inopportune time. But then he thought perhaps his old man had some essential information to impart. Why else would he call him? Chazz never called unless it was important. So in spite of Alice’s glare, he picked up, and loud-whispered, “Dad, I can’t talk right now!”

“That’s all right, son,” Chazz said cheerfully. “I have a little job for you I’m sure you’ll enjoy.”

“What’s that?” he asked, the businessman in him silencing the prudent reporter for a moment. When it came to making money he was always ready. In that sense he was the son of his father, he’d long ago discovered.

“I want you to seduce Grover Calypso’s wife,” his father said, quite surprisingly.

“Huh?” he said, forgetting for a moment where he was.

“I knew you’d like that. Grover’s wife is cheating on him with some lowlife piece of lawyer scum—you know how those lawyers are—and he wants to divorce her but doesn’t want to lose his shirt in the process. So I came up with the idea that you would pretend to be a French billionaire and seduce her. She’ll fall in love with you—or at least with your billion Euro fortune—and divorce Grover herself! Is that brilliant or what?! One of my better schemes, I like to think!”

“Dad, Grover’s wife knows me!” he hissed.

“She does?” Chazz appeared genuinely surprised.

“Of course she does! Bomer’s my best friend, remember?”

Grover’s son had been Rick’s best buddy since high school. They’d even gone to Columbia together, where Rick had devoted his life to journalism while Bomer devoted his to the study of the female anatomy and how much alcohol a single person could absorb in the least amount of time.

“Besides,” said Rick, “have you lost your mind? I can’t go around seducing women! I’m getting married soon!”

“Well, you’re not married yet,” Chazz pointed out, “so why not do me this little favor, huh? You could grow a mustache,” he suggested. “That way she won’t recognize you. You’re French, remember?”

“Dad, I really can’t talk now!”

“Wait! What about a goatee?!”

“I’ll talk to you later, but the answer is no!”

“Just give me a name, will you, son? I need a bachelor!”

Alice was glaring at him, so he quickly said, “Ask Virgil Scattering. He’s single as far as I know.” Then he disconnected and switched off his phone for good measure. His father was one of those self-made billionaires who never took no for an answer. He’d just kept coming at him until he caved.

Alice was eyeing him curiously. “What was that about seducing women?”

“Nothing,” Rick said crossly. “Dad wants me to be a French billionaire.”

Alice shrugged. “There are worse things. My dad wanted me to be a boy.”

They continued sneaking down the stairs. This basement was obviously not the dingy cobwebbed variety. The walls and ceiling were all cement, conspicuously clean, and the light came from a fluorescent lamp that looked new. Whoever had bought Hartford Manor had done some renovations.

“I just hope Fee’s all right,” he said.

“Don’t worry about her. Fee can take care of herself.”

That was true enough. Still. It would have been better if she hadn’t gone off on her own but had stayed with them.

“Let’s just get this over with,” Alice suggested, tired of the interludes.

Spot was tripping about at Rick’s feet, and Tony the Pony was right behind him, breathing down his neck. Then the pony muttered, “I don’t like this, Ricky. I don’t like this one bit.”

“I know, right? Can you imagine? Me? A French billionaire?”

“No, I mean this place. It gives me the creeps.”

Rick gulped. If the place gave a ghost pony the creeps, that was saying something. “Be careful, Alice,” he said. “Something’s not right.”

They’d arrived at the foot of the stairs where another door blocked their progress. This one swung open at a push, and then before them spread a scene unlike any they’d ever witnessed: a large cavernous area that had been turned into the underground lair of some crazy scientist. Desks were stacked with Mason jars filled with weird and creepy bio lab stuff, computer screens flickered all over the place, and suspended from the ceiling, halogen lamps lit up the place like a football field. At the heart of all this, an operating theater had been built, and strapped to the operating table… lay Reece!

“Reece!” Alice cried, and before Rick could stop her, she rushed forward.

Rick decided to hang back. Where there were crazy scientist contraptions mounted all about, it stood to reason that there was a crazy scientist at work as well, and he dreaded the moment he met the fiend in human shape. And a good thing he did, for he suddenly saw that a man was creeping up behind Alice, as she stood bent over her boyfriend, a gun in his hand.

“Alice! Watch out!” he cried.

But too late. The gun discharged, and he watched with sickening dread as Alice dropped to the floor, a tranquilizer dart having hit her in the back.

The shooter, a middle-aged guy with a face like a stretched-out chamois, jerked up his head the moment Rick shouted out, locked eyes with him, and it was all Rick could do not to accost the man and knock him out. Self-preservation prevented him, however, and he quickly ran behind a series of work tables, crouching low, quickly removing himself from the scene. He just hoped that Fee, wherever she was, had the good sense to call the cops. If not, there was no telling how they might get out of this particular predicament.

F
elicity awoke with a splitting headache
. She found herself in a tiny cell, stretched out on a tiny cot, and the moment she opened her eyes remembered what had happened. The last words the woman had spoken were far from reassuring: ‘We didn’t have a baker in our collection yet.’

What could that possibly mean?!

She reached for her head and placed a hand on her brow. Wherever she was, it wasn’t one of the manor’s guest rooms. More like a prison cell, or a monk’s abode. She groaned, wondering how she could have been so foolish.

Who was that blond woman? And who was the old guy in the library? Had they inadvertently ended up in the Addams Family home?

Whatever the case, she needed to get out of here fast.

Then the awful truth came home to her: Tony said they were going to stuff Reece. Was that the same fate that awaited her? Was she going to be stuffed and added to some kind of collection?

It didn’t take long for the answer to arrive, for the door swung open, and that same blond woman who’d knocked her out was standing in the opening, regarding her gleefully. “A real baker,” she said. “Ain’t I the lucky one!”

Felicity estimated she was in her early twenties, and she looked about as fresh-faced and pretty as no deluded kidnapper has any right to look.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked. “Why are you kidnapping people to have them stuffed?”

The girl’s eyebrows rose fractionally. “Oh, aren’t you the clever one?” Then she took a smartphone from her pocket and grinned as she read a message. She quickly typed a response and shoved the phone in the back pocket of her jeans shorts. “We all have a hobby,” the girl said with a shrug, “and ours happens to be collecting people.” She leaned against the doorframe. “You see, Grandpa used to work for the Museum of Natural History at one time, happily stuffing away. Then he was let go—budget cuts. So he did what any unemployed person would do: he turned his work into his hobby and kept on stuffing for his personal pleasure. Soon he became bored with animals and decided to expand his work to a larger canvas. Human beings!”

Felicity didn’t laugh. “So the old man I met in the library…”

“Is my grandfather. Yes. It took him some time to get it right. Humans are a different animal entirely. But after a while, he got the hang of it. At first, he focused on the people he knew and hated, like the museum staff and patrons. They were the ones who kicked him to the curb, so they had it coming.”

Horrified, she asked, “Your grandfather… stuffed them?”

“Every single one of them,” she said with a proud grin. “Of course, they were all pretty stuffy to begin with, so he didn’t have a lot of trouble finishing what mother nature had already started. And that’s when he found his new passion: collecting all the professions of the world. As luck would have it, the museum patrons all had very distinct vocations. One was a doctor, the next a dentist, then there were notaries, college professors, and even an ornithologist—a very strange bird, that one,” she laughed. “And once Grandpa found his joy for life, it proved infectious to his son—my daddy. So I guess you could say we decided to turn it into the family business.”

“I think you’re all crazy,” said Felicity.

Fabiola shrugged. “Lemme see. We’ve got butchers, herpetologists, librarians, painters, writers—that would be Jack Child, the famous bestselling author—and now we’ve got an actor ready to go, a baker—that’s you,” she added helpfully, “and a reporter soon to be added and a…” She hesitated. “What would you say it is exactly that your other friend does?”

“You won’t get away with this,” Felicity growled. “Alice’s father is chief of police.”

The woman gave her a thoughtful look. “Chief of police; now there’s a profession we don’t have yet. I do hope he decides to come looking.”

“Why?” Felicity asked. “Why would you do this? You’re obviously a bright and attractive young woman. You could be anything you wanted.”

“Thanks,” said the girl, giggling as she checked another message on her phone. “It’s just a lot of fun, you know? I mean, what’s the use of getting a boring degree and going to work for some boring company when you can work in the family business instead? And it’s not as if we’re not successful. People pay a lot of money to visit our little house of horrors.” She chuckled. “Madame Tussaud can’t hold a candle to us, believe you me.”

“You get paid to do this?!”

“Of course we do. You don’t think I’d do this for free, do you? We get visitors all the time—even from overseas. And then there’s the website, of course. Our virtual home. You wouldn’t believe how many hits we get.”

“This is crazy—you’re crazy!”

Fabiola shrugged. “Not crazier than the people who spend years getting a degree only to spend the rest of their lives eking out a meager existence becoming professionals, trying to pay off their student loan. We spare them the drudgery of life in the trenches by giving them a new purpose: expanding our collection and providing joy and pleasure for our clients. Now if you don’t mind, I need to pop out for a sec. Your friend Rick seems determined to play hard to get.”

“What have you done to him?!” Felicity cried.

“Nothing yet,” Fabiola said, “but rest assured, he will soon be joining you in the great hereafter.” She gave her a cheeky grin and a pinky wave. “See you soon, Felicity Bell. I’ll give you a place of honor in our collection.”

And with those words, she left the cell and slammed the door behind her.

Felicity closed her eyes in horror. She needed to get out of here. But how? How could she escape this place? She wasn’t exactly Houdini. No, she had to admit defeat. She was going to die at the hands of these crazy people!

And she was just whispering a prayer, hoping that her mother wouldn’t suffer too much when she learned about the disappearance of her one and only daughter, when a heavy breathing sound had her look up. Was Fabiola back? But when she looked over, she saw that Tony was standing beside her.

“Hey there,” said the pony cheerfully. “Why are you in here?”

“Because I’m a prisoner,” she said. “Some crazy woman knocked me out and then locked me up. You have to get the police,” she said. “You have to warn Alice’s father that we’re prisoners and that we’re about to be stuffed!”

“I know,” said the pony sadly. “They’re already working on Reece as we speak—such a pity too,” he added with shaking head. “He was such a nice guy. Always gave me a sugar cube after we finished a session.”

“Well, then don’t just stand there!” Felicity cried. “Go on and get help!”

“Impossible,” lamented the pony. “Who’s going to believe the ghost of a pony? Or, for that matter, even see me?”

“Alice’s father can see ghosts,” she assured him. “He’ll listen to you.”

The pony’s eyes lit up. “Are you sure? He can really see me?”

“Of course he can. Go on then—hurry up and get help!” But when she looked over the pony was still there. He seemed to be musing on something. “Why aren’t you gone yet?” she asked, exasperated.

“But will he believe me?” Tony asked. “It’s one thing for people to
see
me, but will they
believe
me when I tell them about these weird people stuffers?”

“Of course they will. Now just get going, will you?”

“Yes, but you see, I don’t want to risk my reputation. Do you know how hard it is for people to like a ghost pony? Maybe I should get to know the man a little better first? You know, bond and stuff? Get him to like me?”

“There’s no time!” she hollered. She fixed him with an intent gaze. “Look, Tony, we’re all going to die in here if you don’t hurry up and get help. Now!”

“Oh, all right,” he finally said, relenting. And he started clip-clopping away at a leisurely clip.

She rolled her eyes, and hollered, “And be quick about it!”

“Okay!” he yelled, and she heard his gait progress to a lazy canter.