Losers, Weepers Read online

  He was in a foul mood and had obviously stopped for a few belts somewhere along the way. By the time he got home, the power had failed, and the dark, chilly house and cold supper did nothing to improve his humor, and he retired to the living room with the battery radio and a bottle of Scotch. The other three of us huddled in the kitchen through a long, sleepless and terrifying night, wanting to hide from the rain beating against the house like machine gun bullets, shivering at drafts moaning through cracks we hadn’t known the house even had, cringing from unidentifiable thuds and crashes outdoors and finally ready to scream back at a shrieking wind that never shut up.

  The next morning Dad awoke cold, tired and hungover, with rain still coming down and the power still out. The sight of our neighbor’s tree partially blocking our driveway was the final blow for him. Despite warning after warning on the radio to be careful of live wires, he grabbed the chainsaw from the utility room and flung himself out of the house to clear a path for his car, so he could go to work. Thirty seconds later, we were a family of three.

  I think in one way none of us ever forgave him his stupidity. In another, I think we were all quietly relieved that he, his borderline alcoholism, his rotten moods and bitter sarcasm were gone. Mom had to go back to work. Career plans changed for Sonny and me. It was not easy. Only in the last eight or so years had our finances become really stable. But we were happier.

  Anyway, I hardly felt this idyllic family history qualified me to help turn Marie Catlett’s extended family into an ongoing Leave It to Beaver episode. I wondered what she expected of me.

  “Reed loved his first wife and his children deeply, but he didn’t show affection easily,” Marie explained. “Frances, his wife then, was the nurturer. Occasionally she would book them all on an interesting, unusual vacation and simply tell Reed he was going, too. He would argue that he had important work to do, but usually he would finally agree, and everyone would more often than not have a great time. Then he’d go back into his shell. Frances was the one who comforted them all, from a skinned knee to a difficult client.”

  Another of my cigarettes snaked its casual way to Marie’s fingers, and she went on. And on.

  “When Frances died, Reed was absolutely lost. He simply disappeared into his office and was practically mute. I came up and stayed for a while, but obviously something permanent had to be done. Mrs. Hengel, a middle-aged widow, motherly and kind, had served as babysitter since Rob was born. I convinced her to rent out her house and move into Reed’s third floor, to act as housekeeper and surrogate mother. Of course, she wasn’t Frances, but she loved the kids and they were very fond of her. They seemed to be coming through their grief in fairly good shape.”

  She tapped her fingers on the table in obvious irritation.

  “Then Merrilou arrived, announced that she could manage the house quite well with the day help and that the children didn’t need a nanny, now that they were older and had a new Mother, that’s with a capital M. So for the second time, the kids lost a caregiver.”

  I gave a short laugh. “I thought one mother was standard issue. You might be lucky enough to get a stepmother you learn to care for, but you don’t get a new mother. I doubt anyone would ever replace mine.”

  “Quite right,” Marie nodded sharply, as she used to do if I had answered a tricky geography question correctly. “Anyway, let me finally make my point here. Zoe wrote me a few weeks back, asking to come and live with Barbara and me. Barb is my dear friend, another retired teacher. We share a home down in Madison, Connecticut.”

  “I see.” I wasn’t sure if I did or not.

  Marie grinned. “Some discoveries come a bit late in life.”

  Now I saw and returned her grin. “So is Zoe going home with you? Do you think that will work?”

  “That was the plan.” Now, strangely, I thought I saw tears in Marie’s eyes. “We had discussed things that could and could not be done and agreed to give it a try until the end of the year. At that time, we’d reevaluate and see if all three of us wanted to continue the arrangement.”

  “Sounds sensible.”

  “It’s immaterial.” Marie dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “At breakfast this morning, the maid came into the dining room with the news that Zoe’s bed had not been slept in. She had gone out to meet some friends after dinner last night, and no one in the house has seen or spoken with her since.”

  “Did you call the police right away?”

  “No, we did not.” Suddenly Marie sounded very weary. “This has happened before—Zoe staying away overnight—not often, but two or three times. Reed thought she may have gone to a friend’s house, lost track of the time, maybe had some alcohol, and decided it was better not to come home until today.”

  “Well, Marie, that’s worrisome, but it happens all the time with kids. Have you called her friends?”

  “No. Merrilou said it would be too humiliating, and frankly, we’re not sure whom to call.”

  “Humiliating. Who cares?” I asked angrily. “The kid could be somewhere sick or hurt. She could have started home last night and, for some reason, never made it. Did you call the clinic? She could be in there with no ID.”

  “Yes, I insisted on calling them. She’s not there. Nor had anyone of her description been in their outpatient care. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. At about that point the phone rang. Merrilou answered it. She said later the voice sounded like a teenage male, and he said, ‘We have your daughter, and it will cost you one million dollars to get her back.’”

  “My God.” I slammed my cup into the saucer and stood up to go to the kitchen phone. “I’m so sorry! No wonder you need someone to talk to, Marie. But we can’t afford to waste time. The early moments are very important in a kidnapping. I’ll call Sonny and see if they know anything more. Have they got a tap on the phone yet? Or do you know? Surely they’ve got the police there by now.”

  Sonny, by the way, is my older brother and a detective lieutenant in the Provincetown Police Department. He is very good at what he does.

  Marie stood up as I did. “Alex, the police know nothing. As I told you, they have not been consulted.”

  “You mean you still haven’t called them? What does it take to convince your family Zoe is in trouble? Do they think if they ignore this, the kidnappers will get bored and send Zoe home in a cab eating an ice cream cone? She must really feel hopeless and abandoned. Kidnapped by a set of criminals and blessed with a family of lunatics. I’m calling my brother.”

  “Don’t call the police!” Marie made a strong negative movement with her hands. “Reed and Merrilou definitely don’t want them in it. Zoe and Reed have been arguing over some decisions about college, and Merrilou has convinced Reed it is a joke of some sort, or a trick on Zoe’s part to get money out of Reed to spend on the college she wants, and perhaps run away with this so-called girlfriend. We don’t even know who she is.”

  “Why would Merrilou think it’s a joke or a hoax?”

  “As I said, she thought the voice sounded young, maybe a teenage boy. Second, she thinks she heard a girl or woman, laughing in the background.”

  “That hardly constitutes a hoax. The laughter could have been on a TV in another room, or someone laughing nervously or drinking or on drugs. A dozen reasons. And the man who called could simply have had a young sounding voice or be a young man. So what? What did Merrilou say? Did she ask to speak to Zoe to see if someone really has her and she is all right?”

  Marie grunted.

  “No. Merrilou said, ‘I’m looking all over my dining room and I don’t see any million dollars lying around to give to the sorry likes of you. If you’ve got her, I guess you get to keep her.’ And then she hung up.”

  Chapter 3

  I stared at Marie Catlett for a full minute. I’m sure my mouth was open. I had never heard anything so stupid and so cold-blooded in my life. Playing finders-keepers with kidnappers could be a dangerous game.

  “Let’s get over there.” I went for my jacket. “May
be—hopefully—the kidnappers called again, and somebody went suddenly sane and talked to them and to Zoe, or maybe even called the cops.”

  Fargo wanted to go with me and I hated to leave him home alone for God knows how long, so I let him come along. If Marie found this strange, she kept her mouth shut about it.

  In the car, she kept clearing her throat as if she wanted to say something. Finally, I asked her if the dog was bothering her.

  He was sulking in the backseat with his head stuck between the two front seats, and she turned to pat his head. “Heavens, no. He’s a lovely boy. No, I’m just trying to get up the courage to tell you that after my pleas, and those added by Rob and Marvin, Reed finally agreed we should do something about this situation, and that ‘something’ is to retain you to contact some of Zoe’s friends and casually ask if any of them know her whereabouts. Perhaps I should have told you sooner. I didn’t have the nerve.”

  I guess it was a good thing we were already turning into Reed’s driveway at that moment. Otherwise, I would simply have circled the block and gone home and turned the TV on to cartoons or old western movies. Why not? I seemed to be in the middle of a combination of the two.

  We parked under the carport and went in through the kitchen to avoid the rain, which had picked up some, making me wonder fleetingly if Zoe was in a warm, dry spot or someplace deliberately uncomfortable. I thought it sad that Zoe seemed to be not between a rock and a hard place, but a rock and the vacuum that should have been her family.

  We entered the house and Fargo tracked daintily across the pristine white and gold kitchen tiles, leaving a rather artistic trail until we reached the dining room, where his paw prints didn’t show on what was probably a very expensive oriental rug. In that room, we found the entire family gathered silently around the table with coffee cups and crumbled pastries spread carelessly here and there. A real breakfast sat untouched on the sideboard, looking cold and soggy with the warmer lights turned off under the servers.

  “Anything new turn up?” Marie asked quickly.

  I thought I could guess that answer from the universal gloomy expressions. Merrilou answered, and I had forgotten about the accent. “No. Not a single threatenin’ cawl. But this mus’ be yoah deah friend, Alex.” She rose and offered her hand, cool and firm, as she continued her tungsten magnolia welcome, which I won’t even try to duplicate. She introduced me to the family and then poured coffee for me and set a plate of pastries within easy reach. I introduced Fargo, and the two boys got up to pet him. Merrilou smiled at him, and Reed looked underwhelmed.

  “If you’d like a hot breakfast. It would be no trouble at all . . .” She looked at me questioningly.

  “No, thanks, this is fine.” I sipped the first-rate coffee and wondered who was going to be the first to get the conversation going. It was, of course, Marie.

  She announced, “Everyone, Alex thinks we’re all wrong not to inform the police. Immediately. Time is of the essence.” Marvin and Rob nodded. Reed and Merrilou shook their heads.

  Merrilou answered gently. “Marie, Alex, I am convinced it really is some kind of misplaced joke, and bringing in the police would just make fools of them and of us and of Zoe. This has happened before. Without telling us, Zoe has spent the night with a girlfriend. Lordy, what a new meanin’ that has taken on.”

  Reed finally was heard from. “Please, Merri, don’t get into that again. We’re all upset about it, but the immediate problem is Zoe’s safety. Now, I’m inclined to agree it’s some kind of prank. I think Zoe will come waltzing in here with all kinds of excuses and expect us all to laugh with her and compliment her cleverness, and she’ll think I will be convinced to let her go to that damned acting school and—”

  The strident buzz of the phone on the buffet froze us all. Merrilou was the first to jump up.

  “NO!” I managed to shout. “Reed, you get it. Demand to speak with Zoe, talk as long as you can. We may hear identifiable background noise. Tell them you don’t have a million, or even near it. Ask them for a couple of days to try to get some money pulled together. Tell them you’re trying hard.”

  Reed was pushing Merrilou ungraciously aside, grabbing for the phone. I turned to Rob. “Tape recorder? Speaker phone?”

  Marvin was already up and running into the living room. Rob motioned me back toward the kitchen, moving at a trot on the slippery tiles.

  “Tape recorder’s in the living room, speaker’s in the kitchen.”

  He punched a couple of buttons and Reed’s voice came through, with that sort of echo effect speakers lend to any voice.

  “ . . . yes, I’m Reed Catlett. Who are you?”

  “Right now, I’m Zoe’s watchdog. Arf, arf.” I heard a girlish titter in the background. “And if you want me to keep on being a friendly puppy, you’ll keep that friggin’ comedian who answered the first time, off the phone. And you’ll tell me you’ve got that million all counted out, and I’ll tell you how you are to get it to me. That is if you want Zoe back. Scarlett O’Hara didn’t sound like she much cared one way or the other.”

  The voice did sound young, but not childish. The caller could be most any reasonably adult age. I peered back into the dining room. Reed was pale, and his hand that held the phone was shaking, but he hung tough.

  “I don’t do business with dogs or in vacuums. We won’t even discuss money till I know my Zoe is okay. Put her on the line.” His voice was flat and businesslike.

  “My, my, aren’t we the bossy one. That won’t last long.” The kidnapper turned away from the phone and said something I couldn’t hear. There was what seemed a long silence.

  Then a young girl’s voice cried out, “Oh, Daddy! Daddy, come and take me home! They say they’ll kill me if you don’t pay them. Are you there? I feel awful about this. I’m so sorry things didn’t work out.”

  Before Reed could say anything comforting to his daughter, there was some sort of scuffle as she was pulled away. The young man returned. “Satisfied, Daddy? Now here’s what we do. You put a million dollars in fifty- and twenty-dollar bills in a couple of the smallest school backpacks you can fit them in. Unmarked bills, by the way. We’re too smart for that trick. Then you bring—”

  “Not so fast, sonny.” Reed was getting mad, which was fine as long as he remembered who had Zoe.

  “My first clue to your ignorance of what you’re trying to do is that you are not of the business world. Bill Gates may have a million in cash in his house on a Friday morning, but I sincerely doubt it. I tell you right now, I’ve got about three hundred in the house. And I have a little money in the local bank. If I get that and borrow what cash I can today from my friends around here, I’d probably have fifteen thousand. Or a little more. Will that do it for you?”

  Our kidnapper sounded shaky. “Never you mind what world I’m in. And fifteen grand ain’t even a down payment on one of Zoe’s ears, which you’ll get if you keep this shit up. I’ll call you Monday at this time. Have the money . . . all the money!” The connection broke.

  We found ourselves back in the dining room, all talking at once. “How did I do?” Reed asked me.

  “You did just fine,” I said sincerely. “One small thing, you let him know you picked up on his ignorance of the business world. That’s a clue to who he is and it made him nervous, and you don’t want him any more nervous than he is. Believe me, he’s as scared as you are. You want him to think he’s in complete control—right up to the last minute when the cops snap the cuffs on him. Don’t give him any information. Just try to get what you can out of him. Like is Zoe warm, reasonably fed, healthy? Do they want new bills? The longer you can keep him talking, the more likely you are to learn something.”

  I wasn’t giving Reed some information, myself. I’d heard something in Zoe’s plea that I wanted to pursue. But not now. Not with this group.

  “Yeah, sorry about that business world slip. It was just so obvious.”

  “No great harm. Just be aware when next you speak to him.”

&nbs
p; Merrilou’s soft voice came from across the table. “Alex, honey, you did hear how young he sounded and how flip, didn’t you? And that silly giggle. I still think it’s a prank. If Reed had said fifty thousand instead of fifteen, I’ll bet you anything that young man would have taken it.” She leaned against Reed’s back and put her head on his shoulder, her arms around his chest, hands rubbing gently. Reed looked embarrassed and moved away from her.

  I answered before she could take him off to bed. “I doubt it. Our watchdog is still thinking of dining on filet mignon. By Monday, we’ll try two hundred thousand, which will buy a lot of T-bones. Depending on how we phrase it, that may work.” Merrilou’s eyes widened, but she made no comment.

  “Monday seems so far away,” Marie was teary eyed again. “Poor Zoe sounds just terrified. My God, what do you suppose they’ve done to her?”

  “Probably nothing serious. She’s their asset, their only asset until they get the money. That’ll be the time to walk very softly.”

  “What do you mean, ‘nothing serious’”? Marvin asked. With his round face and unreliable voice, he seemed quite mild. Until you looked at his eyes. Maybe he really would be a Marine.

  “Kidnappers like to humiliate their captives.” I took out a cigarette, glad I had remembered to say captive instead of victim. “It makes it easier for the kidnappers to keep them under control if they’re embarrassed and uncomfortable. So they probably took most of her clothes. They may make her eat food right from the can with her fingers. They probably have warned her not to speak unless they tell her to, or maybe won’t let her use the bathroom alone . . .”