A heavenly smell preceded Ambrose up the stairs from the shop. He entered the apartment bearing gifts: two large, fragrant pizza boxes. “Hello, Louisa, Bob. I picked up something to nosh on. Kay and I both think better with pizza in front of us,” he explained.
She took the boxes and set them on the dining table, saying, “Doesn’t everyone? Though it does seem like we’ve had a meal every twenty minutes today.”
Ambrose shrugged off his tweed sport coat and adjusted the cuffs of his periwinkle silk shirt. “God, Kay, this pizza habit goes back to that very first one we made all those years ago, when we were designing the costumes for the school play.”
I went to the kitchen for knives and forks while Bob got beers and soft drinks out of the refrigerator. Kay handed out napkins from the basket that holds her collection of those-that-don’t-matter-if-you-get-pizza-sauce-all-over-them.
“I can barely remember that long ago,” she said, shaking her head. “Chef Boyardee pizza in a box—a little packet of dough mix, and a little can of sauce, and a little packet of desiccated cheese. I was in the eighth grade and you were a mighty sophomore, and I wasn’t sure I'd like this pizza stuff but you were so incredibly sophisticated that I had to act like I did no matter what it tasted like. Was that your first pizza too? I never knew that.”
We settled with the dogs at our feet. Their interested faces clearly expressed their hope that pizza bones would fall on the floor. The bagels we’d consumed earlier had no effect on our willingness to attack the contents of the boxes. Ambrose spread his napkin on his lap and picked up his knife and fork. As he cut into his slice of pizza, he said, “Oh, yes, that was me at the age of fifteen, the complete cosmopolitan.” He looked around the table at each of us. “I understand that I carried away the Albatross at just the wrong moment, but that’s about all I do understand.” He conveyed a neat bite of pizza to his mouth and chewed.
Kay paused in her reach for a pizza slice and looked at Bob and me. “Permission to speak freely? I can vouch for Ambrose’s trustworthiness.”
“Of course,” I said, and Bob nodded. Kay turned to Ambrose.
“Bob is a hypnotherapist. He had a copy of a video of a session with a client who, while under hypnosis, remembered seeing his stepfather in the house on the night that his mother died.”
“That sounds fraught with peril,” Ambrose said. Kay nodded.
“Her death was ruled a suicide because Carl Walsh, the stepfather, had an alibi for being elsewhere, and Ian had blanked out the memory of seeing him in the house. We think that Ian confronted his stepfather with his recovered memory, because Ian died the same way his mother had, an apparent suicide.”
Ambrose had cut another bite, and hastily swallowed it so he could ask, “I take it, Bob, that you hid this tape in the ungainly piece of furniture I hauled out of here this morning?”
Bob nodded. “Except that the tape in the Albatross is a copy of the original. I put the original in my safety deposit box in my bank in High Cross. What I didn’t know at the time was that Walsh owns that bank—he inherited it from Ian’s mother. I don’t know how he got into my box, but that’s where I kept the original tape.”
“My goodness,” Ambrose paused in cutting another bite, “is nothing sacred?”
I had just taken a big bite of pizza, and strings of cheese were festooned from my lips back to the slice. I was trying to separate myself from the cheese when Ambrose’s mild rhetorical question struck me as wildly funny under the circumstances and I snorted with laughter. This had the effect of drawing all eyes to me. I chewed hastily. “Sorry, don’t mind me.”
Kay frowned and went on. “It's possible that a police detective tipped Carl off to the existence of the tape. Bob tried to tell him about his suspicions, but the detective brushed him off. But he was the only person Bob told about the tape.”
“Suggestive.”
“When the tape disappeared, Bob figured if this guy had killed twice, it wouldn’t be safe to hang around and wait for him to do it again. So he came to Willow Falls to hide while he figures out what to do.”
“So, is the possible untrustworthiness of the police the reason we are having this cozy discussion of murder without the help of Ed or any of his minions?” Ambrose asked.
“Right,” said Kay. “I don’t think Ed would spill the beans. But he is still mad at me, and now he’s peeved at Louisa for not getting the license number of Bob’s kidnapper.”
Ambrose’s eyes widened. “Kidnapper!”
“Last night Bob was kidnapped when he went into the Food Right near his house,” I explained.
“By the bad guy? My god, Bob, how did you get away?” He sat up straighter in his chair.
Bob shook his head. Kay said, “No, he was taken at gunpoint by a woman. We don’t know who she is but we think she must be working with Walsh. Bob was able to hypnotize her into a deep sleep and get away, and Louisa and I found him in an old barn near his house when we were going to get Louisa’s car.”
“Ah, Louisa’s car.” Ambrose looked at me. “I was a trifle surprised to see you arrive here this morning with the two dogs in a taxi. What happened to your car?”
Why do people always ask you a question just as you’ve taken a bite of food? I’ve long been convinced that waiters are trained to do it—they sweep by and ask “Is everything all right?” just as you’ve inserted your fork into your mouth, so you can only mumble, and they sweep away again, leaving you no chance to say anything, and your only opportunity to ask for a clean knife or another napkin is gone. This didn’t seem like the time to ask Ambrose if he had ever worked as a waiter. I held up my hand to indicate I needed a moment, and Kay jumped in.
“Louisa was waiting in Bob’s car last night when he went into the grocery store. She saw him come out and drive away in the other woman’s car. She went to Bob’s house this morning to see if he was back, and while she was there she saw a strange man searching her car.”
“Which, if I'm remembering correctly, looks exactly like Bob’s car,” Ambrose said.
“Right. We assume he thought he was searching Bob’s, but his is still parked in Louisa’s garage. When Louisa saw the guy at her car, she ran out the back door with the dogs and got lost in the woods and eventually got to a phone and called a cab and came here, which is when you saw her.”
She made me sound like an idiot, and I knew I'd certainly looked like one when I arrived at her store. “It wasn’t just the woods,” I said, “it was him searching in the barn while we were hiding behind the hay bales—”
Bob looked upset. “I still can't believe he came so close to finding you in the barn.”
“—and that neighborhood with all those stupid curving streets that look alike. I thought we’d never find our way out. It was almost worse than being in the woods.”
Ambrose peered at me with real sympathy. “That must have been frightening, Louisa, though I don’t think either of these dogs would let anyone harm you.” He added judiciously, “And I’ve been lost in places like that neighborhood myself. Believe me, you were lucky to escape merely damp and with a cab bill.”
“Uh, thanks,” was all I could come up with. The image of Ambrose lost in a suburban housing tract beggared the imagination.
Kay swept on. “When we got to Bob’s house we were just in time to see the woman in red—”
“Woman in red?” Ambrose repeated.
“She was wearing a red suit when she marched me out of the grocery store,” Bob explained.
“Only when we saw her again she’d changed clothes and had on a red plaid shirt,” I added.
Ambrose nodded. “I see. Go on, please.”
“Thank you. I will.” Kay glared at Bob and me. I forbore to point out that it was Ambrose who had interrupted her. “We arrived just in time to see this woman drive off in Louisa’s car. I called Ed, I mean the police, but we haven’t heard anything about the car yet. We came back here and made Bob tell us what’s going on.”
“We wanted to watch the tape of Ian’s hypnosis session,” I added.
“Which I hid in Kay’s store,” said Bob. “I was afraid that Carl would catch up with me sooner or later. There would be no reason for him to look here for the tape.”
“And when we went downstairs to get it, we learned he’d hidden it in the Albatross, which you picked up this morning,” Kay said. “So now we need to get the tape back. And we’re waiting to hear from the police about Louisa’s car, and we’re waiting for another shoe to drop. We don’t know when or where Carl or the woman in red will show up.”
“And there’s Trixie,” I added.
“Who’s Trixie?” Ambrose asked. “Is someone really named Trixie?”
“We don’t know if that’s her real name. I found a matchbook from a local bar on Bob’s kitchen table this morning, with the name Trixie and a phone number written inside.”
“I swear I've never seen it before,” Bob said. “I have no idea how it came to be in my house.”
“And every time we call the number, the line is busy,” Kay finished.
Ambrose shook his head and took another bite of pizza. He chewed thoughtfully, then swallowed and said, “The searching of the car—don’t you think it's interesting that they were there at different times? It seems to me if they were working together they’d be searching it together.”
“But the woman in red probably hadn’t woken up yet, it was quite early,” I said.
“And Carl must have thought she had me tied up in her hotel room while he was searching the car,” Bob pointed out.
“Yes, and why was he searching a perfectly innocent car when he could have been in the hotel room interrogating you, or worse?” Ambrose frowned and shook his head. “It would have been much more intimidating for the two of them to be working you over rather than just her. Did she talk to him on the phone?”
Now it was Bob’s turn to shake his head. “No. No calls in or out. I don’t think she even looked at the telephone.”
“I have to wonder if they aren’t working at cross purposes. My guess is that she took Louisa’s car to give herself time to search it thoroughly. You had escaped and could show up at any time.”
Bob said, “That’s possible.”
“And I suppose the registration papers are different,” Ambrose remarked.
Kay groaned and shoved her plate away. “Louisa, all they have to do is read the papers in your glovebox to know where you live.”
Bob looked pale. “Oh god, that’s right.”
“By now they’ve probably been to your house,” Kay continued, “and found Bob’s car in your garage. It isn’t safe, either or both of them could be there.”
An electrical impulse zapped its way down my back and left me chilled. I leaned forward in my chair. “Um, Kay, that’s not all that was in my glove box.”
“What? What else?” she demanded.
“Do you remember those business cards you gave me when I started working for you, with the name of your store and my name on them?”
She paled a little. “They were there too?”
I nodded. “I keep a supply in the car in case I'm out and need one for some reason. And that means—“
“And that means they know about this place,” Bob said. He stood up abruptly. “My god, what have I done to you all? Louisa has to get to someplace safe. Kay, you too. You’re both in danger.” Jack went to Bob and leaned on him.
“I agree that getting to a safe place while I fetch the tape from that benighted restaurant in High Cross is a good idea,” Ambrose said. “Though I think the person most in danger is you, Bob.”
Bob started to speak, but Ambrose held up a hand. He went on, “Two people are intent on finding you. The fact that Louisa had your car would suggest that they might look upon her with a certain disfavor too. The business cards make it likely they’ll come here looking for you, but they won’t know Kay is Louisa’s cousin or be certain that she knows anything. But best to be safe.
“Here’s my suggestion. I have a cabin in the woods out near Parson’s Lake, a little getaway place I inherited from my uncle. It's about thirty-five miles north of here. You can all go there tonight, and in the morning I will get the tape and bring it to you at the cabin. The Albatross is either still on the truck or in the delivery company’s warehouse. I'll make some phone calls tonight but I doubt if I can get at it until tomorrow.”
“I can't go,” Kay stated flatly. We all looked at her. “Hey, I have a store to run. I can't keep chasing customers out of here, though in Doris’s case I would have done it even if I had been open.”
“I beg your pardon?” Ambrose was clearly at sea over this remark.
“Oh, that awful Doris woman who worked with Louisa’s husband showed up at my door earlier wanting to buy something. We had just discovered that the tape was carried off in the Albatross and I didn’t want to mess with her, so I wouldn’t let her in.”
“I don’t imagine she knows you’re my cousin,” I inserted. “We should tell her so she’ll stop coming around.”
“What makes you think that would stop her?” Kay wanted to know. “I'm sure she would relish further opportunities to be rude to you.”
“True,” I had to agree.
“Anyway, Ambrose may be my favorite customer but he’s not my only one. I've arranged for some pieces to be picked up early tomorrow, and I need to be here.”
“But, Kay—” I started. She interrupted.
“I closed today and that was no problem, but I have appointments tomorrow and I won't stay in business if I'm not here when I've said I would be.”
“But, Kay—” I tried again.
“Ambrose is right, Louisa, just because you work for me doesn’t mean I would necessarily know anything about Bob. I could say you don’t work here anymore. I could blacken your name.” She got a zealous light in her eye and started looking eager. “If someone does show up asking about Bob, I’ll send them off in the wrong direction. I can say that I fired you and the two of you ran off together. Oh, I know, I can say you ran off together and that’s why I fired you—”
“Kay, don’t do us any favors,” I warned.
Bob sat down at the table again and looked earnestly into Kay’s eyes. “Kay, you should come with us. Call your customer and put them off. Or come back early in the morning. I can't leave you here to face Carl Walsh by yourself. You’ve never even seen him. He could pretend to be a customer and come in and do something awful.”
“Bob, you are very sweet, but my mind is made up. I have a business to run. I'll bar the doors and arm myself with a butcher knife and a cell phone. Remember, you’re the one they’re after.”
I could have told him to save his breath. I'd seen that expression on her face too many times to imagine she would agree. Short of kidnapping her ourselves, Kay was going to stay in Willow Falls and we were going to Ambrose’s cabin.
Kay always gets her own way.