The Yellow Packard (13 page)

“Have you told anyone about the cash we found?” He softly asked as his eyes moved from the ransom note to her tear-stained face and back to the note.

“A few people,” she cried. “Was that wrong? Did I open the door for this?”

“I don’t think so,” he assured her. “I mean, I told a few folks at the office, too. It could have been me.” He sighed. “Maybe it was both of us combined. Maybe that made us appear rich.”

“George, how much do we have in the bank?”

“A couple hundred,” he moaned. “A lousy couple of hundred.”

“What are we going to do?” It was as if her own words knocked her against the wall. She leaned on it for a moment before adding, “What are we going to do?”

He shook his head. “Don’t have enough time to sell anything. We’re going to have to come up with another way to get the cash.”

Yanking his wallet from his pants, he emptied the contents onto the desk. He quickly leafed through a host of slips until he found a yellow piece of paper with a name and number scrawled on it. Grabbing the phone, he dialed the operator and asked for long distance. As he did, his wife fell to her knees and began to pray.

Chapter 22

T
hanks,” George said as set the receiver down. He looked over to his wife and nodded. “We’ve got the cash.”

“How? Who was that? I don’t understand how you could make one call and get five thousand dollars.”

“If the car got us into this,” he told her, “it might also get us out of it. The man I called was Gerald Shortsleeve. He’s with the marketing department of the Packard Company. He’s going to get the money we need out of company funds tomorrow morning and then drive down here from Detroit in the afternoon. He’ll meet me at the office.”

“Is it a loan?” She asked.

“Only if we get it back,” George replied. “Otherwise it is a gift.”

“He gave it to us just like that?” Carole marveled. “Why?”

“Our ads have sold a lot of cars for the company. He said that if it was the ads that created the problem, Packard wants to make it right. But I did have to agree to one thing.”

“What’s that?” she asked as she pushed herself off the wall and on unsteady legs moved back toward her husband.

George leaned against the desk. “After we get Rose back safe and sound, he wants us to tell the police what’s going on so they can track down those responsible.”

“Oh, George,” she said, a hint of hope evident in her tone. “Will this work?”

“It has to,” he said. “It just has to.”

He glanced toward the front of the store. “We’ve got to get the shop open. That’s one of the rules. If that guy finds out this place is closed, he might do something to Rose.”

“George,” Carole whispered, “I can’t. I’m not strong enough. Anyone who sees me will know something is wrong.”

Placing his right hand on her chin, he lifted her face until their eyes met. “You have to be strong for Rose. You just have to be. Everything we do over the next two days has to look perfectly normal. No one can guess anything.”

“But people know she stays here with me,” she argued. “If she’s not here …”

“You tell people that she’s staying few a few days with my aunt in Indiana.”

“But you don’t have an aunt in Indiana,” she argued.

“No one knows that but you,” he explained. “Make up a name, something you can remember, and if anyone asks, just tell them.”

“Ruth,” she suggested. “She was a strong woman in the Bible. Just saying her name will remind me that I have to be strong as well.”

George nodded. “You know that verse you’re always quoting, about being strong and of good courage? Well you have to live it now. We both do. Everything we say, every move we make, everything we do is for her. Now we’re going into that showroom and get this store open.”

With George following her from the office to the door that separated the two rooms, she grabbed the knob, twisted it, and in short, measured steps made her way back to the front door. After taking a deep breath she flipped the lock. A few seconds later she turned the sign around to O
PEN
and looked back toward a display she’d been working on earlier in the day.

George observed her as she made her way to the flower-arranging table and began to work on an order. Carole would somehow do what she had to do. He was sure of it. But could he keep up the front so well that no one guessed that his whole life was upside down? It would be the biggest test of his life. Glancing out the front window, he noted their Packard parked in front of the shop. Had the car ads set this in motion? He had no idea, but for the moment he wished he’d never seen that car.

Chapter 23

T
he next two days were the toughest days of their lives. Neither of them slept more than an hour or two, and food offered no appeal. They lived on soft drinks and coffee. One of the few encouraging moments was with the Packard Company’s representative, Shortsleeve. He dropped the money off in a blue duffel bag, assuring George that the company had not called the police, as he had requested. Even after George showed him the note and explained the phone message, the visitor still questioned if this was the way to play the game. Even though he felt uneasy about George’s choice, the Packard representative left, promising to keep his pledge. Once he was alone, George opened the bag and made sure it contained assorted bills in small denominations. He counted it to make sure it was all there.

Business was light at the flower shop, for which George was grateful. Several people called wanting flowers delivered, but only a handful of patrons visited the store in person. Of them, only Maud Jenkins, who always seemed to lack tact, asked about Carole’s red eyes and puffy face. Thankfully she accepted the explanation of allergies without question.

Both George and Carol sensed that someone was watching them, but if there was someone following their every move, they never spotted him. That fact unnerved them more than being able to see someone watching their every move.

Beyond missing Rose, time was their worst enemy. The hand of the clock seemed to never move. A minute was like an hour, an hour like a day, and day was like a month. And during that span they aged years. It showed on their faces, in the way they moved, and even in their reactions to normal daily events. They were wound so tightly that each of them pounced on even the slightest offense. They barked at each other for everything from looking out the window too much to pouring but not drinking countless cups of coffee. As the hours ticked closer to the time they expected the call, they all but quit talking to each other. At the shop and at home they spent as much time as possible in separate rooms.

At noon on Wednesday, George announced that he wasn’t feeling well and left the office. That fact that he had deep, dark circles under eyes helped him sell that he was sick. In fact he looked so bad his boss ordered him to rest up for the remainder of the week. George accepted the offer without argument. Having that time off would allow him to take care of the money drop no matter where or when it happened.

He got to the flower shop just after twelve thirty and took a seat next to the office phone. When she wasn’t with a customer, Carole sat next to him. Each time the phone rang, their eyes met. Only after he had nodded his assurance did she pick up the receiver. Six calls came in between one and four that afternoon, four of them were flower orders, one was a wrong number, and the final one was a man trying to sell business insurance.

“Maybe he’s not going to call,” she sighed as she set the receiver in the cradle for the sixth time. A horror-stricken look on her face, she added, “George, maybe we did something wrong. Maybe he saw something I did—he panicked and killed her.” The final word sent a gush of tears from her red eyes. Covering her face with her hands she allowed her head to fall to the desktop.

She just couldn’t hold it together anymore. George couldn’t blame her. If he hadn’t been so tired he would have lain down and given up, too.

Unable to cope, George pulled himself upright and walked wearily into the shop. Surely it was close enough to closing time that no one would question them locking the doors now. He snapped the lock, flipped the light switch off, and reversed the O
PEN
/C
LOSED
sign. Looking past their Packard, he studied the street. The grocery store parking lot was about half full, two cars sat outside Tom’s Hardware, and the café looked as though it was empty. The bank, which had closed two hours before, also showed no signs of activity. It was a typical Wednesday—typical everywhere except in the lives of him and his wife. It appeared nothing would ever be typical for them again.

Carole lifted her head from the desktop when he returned to the office. She dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief as he took a seat. Glancing his way, she offered, “I must look a fright.”

He nodded. “We both do.”

“Did we make a mistake not calling the police?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” He sighed. “I just don’t know. He still has some time. Don’t give up hope yet.”

“Do you think she’s scared?” Carole’s words hung in the air like an unwanted summer fog. Try as he might, George simply couldn’t think of a comforting answer that would bring any hope to his shattered wife. After all, he’d wondered the same thing a thousand times over the past few days. All his questions did was prove that he had not done his job as a father.

“Carole,” he began, but the phone’s ring cut his words short.

She glanced at him and he nodded once more. Just as she had earlier, she reached for the receiver, lifted it from its cradle, and said, “Carole’s Flowers.”

He looked at her for any sign that this was the call they had been waiting for. The answer came when she lifted her eyes to his and nodded.

“Is our daughter all right?” she asked the caller.

George put his ear next to hers so he could hear, too.

“She’s fine. She’ll stay that way if you do just as I ask.”

“We will,” Carole assured him. “We just want her back.”

“Do you have the money?”

“Yes.” She then added, “And we haven’t called the police.”

“Smart girl,” he said. “Grab a pencil and write this down. You must follow these instructions to the letter, or the girl dies. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Carole assured him. “I understand. I have a pencil and a piece of paper, just tell me what we need to do.”

“South of Terre Haute, Indiana, there is a place called Prairie Center. It is a wide spot in the road on Highway 63. You got that?”

She hurriedly scribbled the information. “Highway 63, Prairie Center.”

“Drive two point five miles south of Prairie Center. On the right will be a little picnic area with a table, trash can, and small pull-off area. You can’t miss it. There are three large elm trees, and the table is in the middle of that stand of trees.”

As George listened and watched, Carole wrote and talked, “The rest area is two and a half miles outside of town.”

The droning instructions immediately picked up. “At ten tomorrow morning, park that yellow car at the picnic area, leave the cash on the back floorboard, and then start walking south toward the town of Fairbanks. Walk that direction for thirty minutes at a steady pace. You will be watched. At ten thirty, turn around and walk at that same pace back to the picnic grounds. Don’t get there before eleven. Have you got that?”

“Walk south for thirty minutes, then turn around and walk back. And we aren’t supposed to get back to the drop point before eleven.”

“Not
we
,” the voice corrected her, “
you.
”

Grabbing the phone, a suddenly livid George protested, “She’s not going to do this on her own. I have to be there, too!”

The words had no more cleared his lips when the line went dead. Carole looked to her husband, panic written on her brow and hopeless rage boiling in her gut. “What have you done?” she screamed. “You just killed our little girl.”

“But he was going to make you drive there all alone,” George shot back.

“And you think I couldn’t handle it?” she yelled. “You made him mad, George. He might be killing our little girl right now. How could you be so stupid?”

Sinking into the chair, George buried his face in his hands. He’d been warned about playing by the rules. The kidnapper had demanded it.

One emotional outburst may have sunk the whole ship.

The phone’s ring caused him to bolt upright. Carole glared at him as she hurriedly answered, “Hello.” She nodded toward her husband before adding, “Yes, he understands. Okay, he can ride as far as Prairie Center, and I can drop him off to wait until I come back.” She nodded again. “I’ll tell him he will be watched, so he better not talk to anyone. What else do I need to know?”

With George watching, she listened intently but wrote nothing down. A minute later, she set the phone back down.

“So you heard,” she asked, her voice amazingly steady, “that you get to go with me up until I leave for the rest area?”

He nodded and asked, “What else did you find out?”

“When I get back to the picnic grounds, the money will be gone, and Rose will be in the backseat of the car. He said she’d be fine, but they would tie her up so she couldn’t get out and walk away. When I get there and untie her, I can drive back and pick you up and go home.”

“That’s it?” he asked.

“Well,” she added, “he told me that we had to drive the Packard. He explained it would be the easiest car for him to spot. If we take anything else, Rose dies.”

“And nothing else?” he asked. “We leave them the money and that’s it.”

“That’s everything. And we have to do it their way. No slipups! You do understand that, don’t you?”

The man behind this scheme had all his bases covered. He had this thing planned so there would be no chance of his being caught. There would be no adults to identify him, no fingerprints, no way to trace the loot. His five-thousand-dollar payday looked like a sure bet. And with no man at the drop site to attempt to overpower him, the chances improved even more.

“I think we need to go home, George,” Carole suggested. “Let’s at least try to sleep a little. And we also need to plan out the route to this place so we get there in plenty of time. We can’t afford to be late.”