2 Pane of Death (29 page)

“I was never in the house! He hired these guys who carried the stuff out, and I just stowed the crates in the back of the truck. I didn’t know anything about a murder until I came back to collect what he owed me. And then I put two and two together and I figured out it was Ferguson’s house.” And Gemberling said he couldn’t pay me until I helped him get you out of the way.”

My kidnapping could wait; I wanted to hear more about the theft. I was surprised that Ian had trusted outside labor to do his dirty work, but he clearly wasn’t strong enough to wrestle with the heavy crates by himself. And Maddy’s impetuous act had forced his hand, and he had had to improvise. It must have been one of those “guys” that Matt had picked up, the one who said he wanted to make a deal. “Didn’t you wonder why he had you drive the glass here? And by the way, where are we?”

“He lied to me, said he had to hide the crates—something about a nasty divorce, and he didn’t want his wife to know where to find them. And we’re somewhere just outside of town—he’d checked out this place ahead of time. Look, what about my eyes? They hurt!”

“I’ll see if I can find some water.” I stalked off, looking for running water. I didn’t have much luck. From what I could see, this warehouse hadn’t been used for a while, at least, not for any legitimate purpose. When I tried a light switch, nothing happened, so the electricity was off. Then Maddy emerged from what looked like an office. “The phone’s dead,” she said.

“I’m not surprised. This place must be off the radar, which is what Ian wanted. Did you find a bathroom?”

She looked blankly at me. “But that was just a story!”

I sighed. “I was going to try to find some water to wash the salsa out of Chas’s eyes. I guess he’s out of luck, huh?”

Maddy started whimpering again. “Oh, Em, what do we do now? Ian’s going to be back any minute. Should we make a run for it? Take the truck? What?”

“You have your cell phone?”

Maddy looked surprised, then baffled, then disappointed. “No, it’s back at the shop.”

“Chas? What about you? Cell phone?”

“In the truck,” he said in a sulky voice.

Ah, yes, we did have Chas’s truck, and that could get us out of here. I crossed the echoing expanse of floor and checked the big metal door at the warehouse entrance—which wouldn’t budge. Damn! Ian must have locked it. He was definitely not a trusting soul. I rattled the thing, and it seemed pretty sturdy. Maybe I could ram the truck through it—or maybe not.

But what about the art? Where was it? Ian and his helpers would be back soon, but I needed to be sure it was here. I reversed course and loped toward the dim recesses of the back of the warehouse.

“Em, what are you doing? We have to get out of here!” Maddy tottered along after me, her heels clacking.

“Not until I find Peter’s collection,” I said grimly.

“But Ian is going to kill us!” She was having trouble keeping up with me. There was a good reason why I didn’t wear heels to work in—not that I’d ever expected to have to flee murderous art thieves. But it paid to be prepared.

“Then go and find Chas’s phone and call the cops. I’m going to find the glass.”

Maddy turned and headed back toward the truck, while I continued toward the back of the warehouse. There was a lot of leftover crap, long abandoned, but luckily I knew what I was looking for. When I reached the back end, I was relieved to find a stack of tall crates. I recognized them from Peter’s house. I managed to shift one slightly: Yes, the glass had to be inside, because the crate was seriously heavy. No way we could move the crates to Chas’s truck, even if we did have time. Which we didn’t.

Time to vamoose. Maybe we could ram the truck through the door, and I was getting desperate enough to give it a try. But what should we do about Chas, still writhing on the floor outside the truck? At the very least we’d have to move him out of the way, to turn the truck around. It might be a good idea to take him along and hand him over to the authorities, but I doubted that Maddy and I could lift him into the truck, with or without the coating of salsa that made him slippery as a fish. He’d have to stay where he was for now and take his lumps from Ian and his thugs. I jogged back toward the truck, gauging angles, looking for alternatives. The side door? We could walk out, no problem, but I still had no idea where we were, and I didn’t want to risk running into Ian in a deserted industrial park. He’d just grab us all over again. I didn’t think Maddy with her silly shoes would be very good at running and hiding. I’d rather take the truck and take my chances on the road.

I’d reached the side door while working this out in my head. It wasn’t locked, to my relief. I opened it a crack, slowly—and closed it much more quickly. We were out of time: There was a truck approaching. It had stopped at the exterior gate, and I recognized Ian as he rolled the gate back for the truck to pass. Ian was certainly a cautious type, taking no chances. Well, with a multimillion-dollar art collection sitting here, I probably would have been careful too. I turned to Maddy, who had slid down from the front seat of the truck, Chas’s phone in her hand. “Too late—Ian’s back, and it looks like he’s brought some friends along. Did you get through to the police?”

Maddy whimpered. For a brief moment I was tempted to throw her to the wolves and make a run for it—that was the kind of feeling she inspired in me. Luckily for her that wasn’t possible. The nearly empty warehouse offered few places to hide: The largest contents at the moment were the crated glassworks, and that was the first place these guys would look, once they saw salsa-covered Chas tied up on the floor. “Yes, they’re coming,” she said in a dramatic whisper.

Great: Help was on the way. Unfortunately Ian was closer. Maybe we could reenact our assault on Chas? But somehow I doubted that we had enough salsa left to take on Ian and friends, and we were outnumbered. And we certainly didn’t have time to wrestle Chas out of sight.

“Maddy!” I said urgently. “Slap some tape over Chas’s mouth to shut him up. I’m going to get into the truck cab and make sure the keys are there.” I hoped. If they weren’t . . . well, I didn’t have any other ideas lined up. “Then get in with me. When Ian and his pals open the doors to bring in their truck, I’m going to make a break for it. If we’re lucky they won’t notice anything’s wrong until we clear the building.” I figured the truck could handle an old chain link fence outside, as long as we were through the warehouse door. I just prayed the other truck didn’t block our exit route completely.

For once Maddy acted quickly. I dashed to the truck door and climbed in.
Damn!
No keys—which meant . . .

Maddy climbed in on the other side. “Looking for these?” She held up a ring of keys. “They were in Chas’s pocket.”

“Terrific! Now duck down so they don’t see us.”

I could hear the other truck idling outside the warehouse as Ian worked the padlock for the outer door. I stuck the likeliest-looking key into the ignition and prayed the truck would start quickly. We would have a few seconds at most before Ian and crew figured out what had happened, and I didn’t want to waste time—not that we had any time to waste. Either this worked, or we might well be dead in minutes. I looked at Maddy, crouched opposite me in the cramped cab, phone at her ear. “Ready?”

She nodded silently. The outer door rolled up, and the other truck rolled into the warehouse.

“Hang on,” I said grimly to Maddy, who shrank into her seat. I sat up, jammed my feet on the clutch and the gas, and sent up a prayer to any gods who might be listening. The engine turned over on the first try—
thank you, Chas, or whoever had kept this truck running smoothly
—and I fumbled for a moment with the unfamiliar gear shift. Ian and his buddies had turned toward our truck when the engine roared to life, immobilized for a moment, but now they were moving toward us. I shifted into what I hoped was first gear and gunned the engine, heading straight for the door. If the men got in the way, too bad. Yet a small part of me was relieved when they jumped clear as I wove around their truck and raced toward daylight.

I was not surprised to hear a faint pop of gunfire. I couldn’t tell if they hit anything important, but I wasn’t going to stay around to check. Once outside the building I made a beeline for the outer fence, where punctilious Ian had indeed closed the gate again. I will admit to closing my eyes as the front end of the truck rammed into the chain link—and kept right on going.

When I opened my eyes there were police cars in front of me. I slammed on my brakes in time to avoid hitting the nearest one. The officers in the car had jumped out and were pointing guns at me. I took a quick peek at Maddy, who was bolt upright and white as a sheet. “You okay?”

She nodded.

“Then we’d better start explaining.” I opened the truck door slowly and stepped out, my hands high. “Boy, am I glad to see you guys! You sure got here fast.”

“On the ground.” One officer advanced cautiously, gun still drawn. He gestured toward me, then down.

Who, me?
But who was I to argue? “Yes, sir,” I said as I laid myself facedown on the cracked asphalt. “But you might want to check out what’s going on in the warehouse. I think the guys in there have guns.”

The officer made no reply as he frisked me efficiently, then pulled me to my feet. “What’s going on?”

I was debating about how to answer that when I saw another car pull up behind the two, no, three squad cars, and Matt climbed out. I felt a surge of relief, and for a brief moment contemplated throwing myself into his arms and bawling. I controlled myself. After all, we had an audience—and an art collection to rescue.

Matt strode up to me. “Em, what the hell is going on?”

I tried to make my answer succinct. “Ian Gemberling had a trucker named Chas Jenson kidnap me from the shop and bring me here so he could kill me. He called Maddy and she came and he was going to kill her too—she’s in the truck. Peter’s art collection is in the warehouse there. So is Ian, and he’s got a couple of friends with guns. And Chas is in the warehouse too, but he was tied up when we left. This is his truck.” Looking a little the worse for wear after its encounter with the fence. Too bad. I was not disposed to feel charitably toward Chas at the moment.

Matt gave me a long look, as if he didn’t quite believe me. I couldn’t blame him—I wasn’t sure I would have believed me either.

I kept talking. “No, seriously. Ian planned to steal Peter’s collection, probably been planning it for a while, and Maddy says she accidentally killed Peter. She stabbed him and then called Ian, and he came and got the stuff out of there as fast as he could and stashed the art here to wait until things settled down and he could get his own people here to move it. But I guess I made too much of a stink, because he figured he’d better get me out of the way so he could leave town. He was planning to kill me and Maddy and try to make it look like an accident at Maddy’s shop.”

Matt was still staring at me, but more in horror now than in disbelief. “Em, slow down and breathe. You just figured this out?”

“Yup, in the last hour or so. By the way, how’d you get here so fast?”

Another officer approached, a firm hand on a squirming Maddy’s arm. “What do I do with her, Chief?”

Matt gestured him away. “Hang on to her for a minute.” For once Maddy kept her mouth shut. Matt turned back to me. “When you were nowhere to be found, Allison called Cam, who called me. But we would have found the place anyway. One of the guys Gemberling hired to move the stuff out of Peter’s house ratted him out, and he remembered the trucker’s name. Chas has a GPS tracker in the truck.” He hesitated. “You sure you’re okay? I got a little worried.”

We could congratulate each other later. Right now Ian and his merry men were guarding the fortress, and we needed to apprehend him and save the fair maiden . . . er, the glass. “I’m fine. Never better. What now?”

“We arrest Gemberling. How many are there?”

“I think I saw two men, in addition to Ian. But I was a little busy trying to get the truck moving, so there might be more. Oh, and Chas, except we left him tied up. I’m not sure Ian will untie him, under the circumstances.”

“Right. Stay here.” Matt strode off and conferred with his men. There was much nodding and pointing as they worked out an assault plan.

It was then that another horrible possibility hit me. “Wait, Matt!” I joined the party. “You can’t fire.”

“What?”

“I mean, if there’s any shooting, you can’t fire back, because you might hit the glassworks.” I ignored the irony that I really didn’t care if they hit human being Ian Gemberling or any of his friends, as long as Tiffany, Chagall, and Morris survived unscathed.

“I’d prefer that there was no shooting. We thought we’d try talking to Gemberling first.”

“Oh.” I subsided, feeling a little silly, as another officer handed a bullhorn to Matt.

He took it and switched it on. “Ian Gemberling,” his voice—tinny, electronic—boomed. “Throw out your weapons and come out with your hands up.”