Garage Sale Stalker (Garage Sale Mysteries) (19 page)

CHAPTER 41

H
e led the way
to the living room, which she remembered uneasily from her arrival the day before. Here she’d recognized the painting above the fireplace, realized the farmer was the dreaded Wrestler, grasped her peril when he blocked her escape and crashed to the floor when the dog attacked her.

Had she ever really been that
other
Jennifer Shannon, living a happy life with her family, innocently attending weekend sales, harming no one, oblivious to the remotest possibility of abduction by a madman? One minute the clear identity of her full, rich, trouble-free life, and the next at the mercy of a tormentor intending to kill her. She swallowed hard.

Now more than ever, she needed her wits about her! These large windows faced the front yard and, beyond that, the road. However fleeting the chance, she needed to focus on this scene, because this could be where she’d run headlong if...

His expressionless voice interrupted her train of thought. “Clean this room. The dog guards you constantly. When you finish, press the buzzer.” He placed the familiar electronic pad on the coffee table and, turning on his heel, disappeared down the hall.

Plugging in the vacuum cleaner, she shoved and yanked it while studying the view out the window. A long, rectangular yard between the house and the road looked football-field size and overgrown with waist-high brush. Kudzu vines draped many trees. She wondered if the grass were tall enough to hide in, but what was she thinking? She couldn’t crouch there undetected with the dog in pursuit.

This outdoor view reminded her of the
long
driveway down the side of the rectangle from the house to the road. If only she’d jogged daily! Now, even if she reached the outside, how fast could she move and for how long? Had she enough stamina to run down that driveway and then along the road to find help? Even so, she could
never
outrun the dog.

Parking the sweeper in front of the window, she went to the entryway alcove to look for a front door alarm system. No keypad, but one might be inside the front hall closet. Her approach elicited a warning growl from the dog standing in the foyer, head alert and eyeing her closely.

From a pocket she retrieved the last piece of plastic-wrapped meat for the dog and, making the clicking sound, fed him the bite. “Good dog,” she praised, pretending to dust the foyer. The dog watched her closely but didn’t move as she satisfied herself no alarm system existed inside the closet. “Such a good dog,” she encouraged the animal, who licked his lips anticipating another treat.

Would the living room tell anything personal about her captor? She knew the furniture’s origin. Maybe the man didn’t live here, but only “camped” here. Did he lead a double life? What best fit the few facts she understood?

Under the lamp on a corner end table sat a small travel clock, the kind that folded up flat into a case the size of a cracker. Its second hand moved rhythmically and the time shown mirrored a wall clock. Without a clock or window to gauge outside light, in the cellar time stopped.

Ostensibly dusting the little clock, she folded it shut and slipped it into her pocket, but in doing so felt a small lump already there. Investigating this brought a smile: Tina’s tiny frog. These must be the same slacks she wore on her birthday when she tucked away the special gift. Wishing the Chinese good-luck legend to apply now, when only magic could help her through this insane situation, she slipped the clock into her other pants’ pocket.

She was running out of options. She’d already cleaned much of the house while discovering few clues except in the nightstand drawer and the basement’s three hat boxes, clues which might be important or not. Outside of escape or rescue—and she had ruled out rescue in her untraceable location—if Wrestler locked her back in the basement, she probably wouldn’t emerge alive.

She finished the living room but did
not
press the buzzer. Buying time made sense now. She fluttered the dust cloth, creating make-work. “Good dog,” she said several times and each time the animal let her move quite close to him before his warning growl. Was she becoming less fearful of dogs? After enduring a fifty-five year phobia, this subtle change amazed her.

What would unfold next? She’d earlier planted the seed about cooking. Buying this much time seemed incredible, but once she finished cleaning the house and, if allowed, cooked a meal, her usefulness ended. Tonight was the night! One way or another! If her attempt failed, she was out of options.

She pressed the buzzer.

CHAPTER 42

W
hen he strode into
the living room to survey her work, she willed him not to notice the missing clock. His eyes scanned the room and lingered near the table where it belonged, but after a few agonizing seconds, passed by.

“Follow me,” he ordered again.

Awash with relief, she trailed him back down the hallway, where he opened a door across the hall from the bedroom she earlier cleaned. “Clean this room,” he said, again directing the dog to guard the open doorway before he returned to the same room as before and closed the door.

Jennifer gaped in surprise at a home work-out room! But of course! This tracked with his body-builder physique, earning him the name “Wrestler.” No gym-enthusiast herself, she still recognized most machines: treadmill, stationary bike, rowing machine, stair-stepper and weight bench. These machines cramming the room insured variety for a serious cross-trainer.

Putting down the cleaning equipment, Jennifer wandered to the window, lifted the shade and studied the overgrown front yard. Somewhere beyond lay the county road and freedom. Was this her last glimpse of this tantalizing view? She sighed wistfully before turning to her job.

She vacuumed the wood floor, mopped, then wiped down the machines. Her daughters said Wrestler bought her rowing machine at their sale, a machine she herself bought used two years earlier to start a fledgling exercise program. Such machines looked alike but she could identify hers by a white paint spatter unintentionally flicked across a corner of the machine during a decorating project at home. Crouching down, she spotted the familiar mark. To think one of her own belongings improved the daily health and strength of a man scheming to kill her felt eerily unjust. This bitter irony nauseated her. She swallowed hard until the urge to vomit passed.

When steady again, she resumed cleaning the remaining machines. Only one closed door remained in the hallway: his office, she guessed, because he spent most of his time there and because she’d found almost nothing personal or revealing anywhere else upstairs. There he must do his “important work,” as she’d improvised in the basement, whatever that might be. Harking back to their first encounter at the garage sale, he did buy that collection of Playboy magazines. Were they stacked in his office for regular attention or the unwanted part of a package deal which he later tossed?

If his office held sensitive secrets, work or play, he still might instruct her to clean there. At last she’d satisfy her curiosity by learning what he did, even if she could never use the information because he’d kill her first. She gulped at this incongruity.

If Wrestler were one of the boys in the hatbox photos, how did the facts connect? The letters suggested first their cruel father abused the boys and then their broken mother, who saw her despised, insane husband in his sons. Jennifer couldn’t imagine hurting a helpless child, but from Childhelp volunteering she recalled the sobering statistic that five youngsters
die
every day in America from abuse or neglect.

She thought of the school house outside. What if it weren’t a playhouse at all, but a dementedly different kind of “learning” house? If so, what had the boys endured there? And that pet grave under the cross. Was an animal buried there… or something else?

Tina?

Even if the savage cruelty of Wrestler’s mother triggered his hatred of women, despising that horrible woman was one thing but randomly murdering innocent women to defy her, quite another. How differently it might have turned out if he’d broken that chain of violence, by himself or with outside help. She knew the statistics: without intervention, one-third of abused waifs would then abuse their own kids and on and on… What a sickening spiral of vicious human behavior.

Jennifer’s earlier idea to gain an edge by psyching out her captor had faded. Unable to defend herself physically, she’d hoped at least to defend herself verbally, perhaps with a tirade of discovered truths he thought no one else knew. Or would that further enrage him, intensifying his resolve to extinguish her knowledge in ways too terrible to imagine? Or maybe she could calmly talk him out of his plan for her, proposing treatment alternatives instead of further brutality. Sure! Who was she kidding?

Opening the closet to clean inside, she found a zippered plastic suit bag pushed to one end. Glancing anxiously toward the open door, she slid the zipper down and spread the bag open. A military uniform hung inside with two shirts on adjacent hangers and two sets of fatigues behind those. On the hat shelf above the suit bag gleamed a pair of highly polished black dress shoes and a second pair of worn high-top combat boots. Looking furtively again toward the door, she unzipped the bag far enough to see the name stitched above the fatigue uniform shirt pocket. “Yates,” she read before zipping the bag closed, a hasty glance toward the open door confirming that only the dog observed her stealth.

Only one machine left to clean. Two books lay on the treadmill’s stand, one closed and atop it a smaller open book, apparently material he studied when working out the last time.

Sliding the top book aside, she read the title beneath: “The Militia Handbook.” Covering it again with the small opened book, she saw the picture of a small frog with reddish orange upper body above blue legs and hind quarters, almost as if the tiny creature wore blue trousers.

She read:

“Red and Blue Poison
Dart Frog (dendrobates
pumilio) and its ‘cousins’;
small, 2-3 cm brightly colo
red frogs found in Costa
Rica, Panama and Ecuador
, eat small insects and beetle
s. Their toxin, batrac
hotoxin, more potent than cu
rare and ten times more potent than tetrodot
oxin from the puffer fish, affects the
nervous system. Currently
no effective antidote exists for
the treatment of batrachot
oxin poisoning. Each
frog contains enough poison to
kill 20,000 mice. Humans
can get sick just by touching the
frog’s skin. Central
and South American natives
use the frog’s poison on thei
r hunting darts. The frog’
s consumption of certain beetl
es, which either make the toxin o
r get it from their own
food chain, appears strategic t
o the manufacture of the frog
’s toxin because captured f
rogs fed a different diet
lose their poison.”

Impossible! Frogs, snails, turtles and butterflies were the “safe” wild creatures she’d
encour
aged
her growing children to catch and play with. She didn’t dream frogs anywhere were dangerous. She riffled curiously through succeeding pages, which pictured more brightly colored frogs with similarly descriptive text. Flipping back to the cover, she read the title, “Poison Frogs and Toads of Central and South America.” Was this her intended fate? Would a poisoned nervous system cause her excruciating end?

No, she guessed, he’d do that job with his own two hands. And thinking of those hands, she realized with resignation that looking at the man’s left hand might serve her curiosity, but not her escape.

She patted her pants’ pockets, feeling the small clock in one and Tina’s frog in the other. She rubbed the little frog. This one containing no poison. But perhaps, a miracle? If ever she needed good luck, now was the time.

The cleaning finished, her finger hovered over the buzzer. If she pressed it, would her life end in the next few minutes? She’d wait, buying time, until he appeared next. But at that very moment, he materialized, nearly filling the doorway with his stocky frame.

“Well?”

“Finished,” Jennifer said, hoping to god it wasn’t the literal truth.

CHAPTER 43

A
pproaching Hann
ah’s house to
spend some
brief time
with her before he went to work, Adam fought the triple frustration of getting nowhere fast on an important case, of his personal stake in its outcome and of witnessing Hannah’s anxiety.

He liked Jennifer Shannon from the moment she marched into his office with her logical theories about the moving-sale burglaries. Since then, his tender feelings for Hannah had grown until he felt
personally en
twined in everything surrounding this ca
se. Now that he and Hannah date
d regularly, he enjoyed
not only the
companionship of this lovely, bright girl, but also the dynamics of her big, affectionate family. He’d missed out on this as an only child.

Working on a case involving people he knew and liked, he vowed early not to let his subjectivity compromise the objectivity the case demanded. In fact, he felt his focus and dedication
increased
because of his p
ersonal involvement,
providing heightened
motivation that could make a positive difference. For Adam, this wasn’t “just another case.”

Adam hated seeing Hannah so forlorn, his attempt at calming platitudes ringing hollow even to his own ears. What you most want to do is comfort someone you care about who suffers distress. Yet, short of finding her missing mother, he knew his well-meant words sounded ineffective. And despite his best efforts, never mind those of the entire police force, would Mrs. Shannon ever be found—alive or dead? His heart twisted when Hannah looked up at him and said, “You’re a detective. Can’t you do
somethin
g?”

“If only I could! The department just has no leads, Hannah. We’ve shown your mom’s photo to all the people who listed sales in the paper that day. Some remember her, some don’t, but nobody
noticed when she left, what di
rection she went or recalls her
mentioning where she’d go next. You know what a zoo those sales can be. We’ve shown her picture, description and license number on the media. We’re doing everything we can.”

“Adam, I’m so scared. I can’t stand thinking something terrible happened to her.” Hannah whispered.

“The radio and TV broadcasts have netted lots of tips. Nothing productive yet, which is typical, but we check out each one and that’s our best hope at the moment. Someone somewhere surely saw something!”

“Oh, Adam,” Hannah threw her arms around him. “Please find her. I miss her so much!”

To her surprise, Adam revealed, “I do, too. It’s as if I’ve been waiting most of my life for your big family… and most especially for you. The minute I met you I wanted you in my life.”

Hannah let him fold her into his strong arms and looked up. They shared a light kiss, this stolen moment of pleasure a sharp contrast to their shared worry over her vanished mother.

But unbidden thoughts of Kevin crept again into Hannah’s mind. She’d promised herself to avoid vulnerability. True, she liked Adam, his good looks, his appealing sense of humor, his intelligence, kindness and dedication to work. But Kevin had many of those qualities also, which he used to earn her trust, loyalty and love… only to betray her. No one wanted that kind of hurt again. How different could Adam be? After all, he was a man.

Shouldn’t she protect herself f
rom heartache by using the
valuable lesson she’d learned the hard way? Or might she someday trust and love again, as her dad predicted?

“Oh, Adam,” she pulled away, not wanting to share her perplexing thoughts with him. “I… I do care for you, but…”

“But…?”

“But so much is happening now. I’m sorry to be upset all the time because my mom’s in trouble. I understand how hard you’re trying to find her. Since you’ve been with the police, this is the only case you haven’t been able to solve, much as you want to.” She started to cry softly.

“That I haven’t solved
yet!”
He hugged her close and then held her at arm’s length. “Hannah, if ever I’ve seen a survivor, it’s your mom. She’s a land-on-her-feet person. I can just feel it.” He stroked her hair. “Look, at the department we’re trained to deal with facts. But intuition can take you places facts don’t. I might not be this optimistic in other situations, but my gut feeling is this will work out okay. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but I believe it will.” He hugged her close again, wrapping her in his protective arms.

“Just hearing you say that helps. Thank you, dear Adam.” They shared a real kiss.

Reluctantly he broke from their embrace. “Look, I’m going back to the station to stay on this. I may be up all night, but if anything breaks, you know I’ll call immediately. Keep your cell phone on. Try to calm your family and I’ll see you tomorrow, no matter what happens tonight.”

“Thank you for trying so hard, Adam.” She squeezed his arm affectionately as he walked toward his car and sped away.

Brushing away tears of confusion, Hannah blew a heartfelt kiss toward his departing vehicle. She smiled at the silhouette of his continuing farewell wave through the vehicle’s rear window and watched his car grow ever smaller as it receded down the street, turned the corner and was gone.