Part 27 (1/2)

”Who told you such things? How can you possibly know-”

Mama Jack tugged on a cable attached to one of the arms of her chair. The platform whirred off across the ceiling. Josh was left standing alone in the semidarkness.

19.

THE NOTE HAD been pushed under the front door some time during the evening. Tess saw it first and sat in the front hall with it clasped in her hand until Josh returned from Mama Jack's Cave.

”From them what's got her? It is, ain't it, Mr. Turner?”

”Yes, Tess. It is.”

”Is she all right?” Holding an already sodden handkerchief to swollen eyes.

”They say she is. We can only pray they're telling the truth. Get Ollie, Tess. Hurry.” Cursing meanwhile the fact that he and Zac had telephones only in their offices.

”Well,” Zac said, ”at least now we know what the villains are after.”

”I've been thinking,” Josh said. ”I've one suitcase left in the clockworks. It's only half full, but that's a hundred thousand.” He'd left it in place all these years. His fund of last resort, insurance of a sort.

”You think they'll take cash rather than the lots?”

Josh was standing beside the window of his study looking north across the garden. It was nearly midnight. A bright sliver of moon illumined a patch of white petals that had drifted to the gra.s.s, blossoms of the late flowering Roxbury Russet apple. Something he knew only because Mollie had told him. ”I'm hoping so,” he said. ”I can't think Mollie will care much about surviving if I sign away all this. The garden has become her reason for living.”

”All the lots you own west side of Fourth Avenue,” Zac said, looking at the note that now lay on Josh's desk. ”Eighty-Seventh to Ninety-Fifth.”

Josh nodded. He'd bought the remainder of his mother's uptown lots from the estate soon after his father died. Goldie had remained in England all these years-some sort of unconventional liaison, her brothers a.s.sumed-and she needed cash. The purchase of the additional Fourth Avenue lots had served her purposes and Josh's, and neither Zac nor Simon had objected.

All for this. He glanced down at the ransom note, then out through the window. He'd been too long on his feet and his right leg felt like it might give way, still he stared out at what Mollie had spent five years creating, the child that comforted her childless sorrow. A cloud covered the moon and the garden seemed to be disappearing before his eyes. ”They're specific,” he said. ”We have to give them that.”

Zac was scratching something on a pad. ”What's your reckoning? Is forty thousand for each lot fair market value?”

”At the moment it is.” Josh's voice was heavy with something close to despair. ”They're going up every day. But even at the present rate . . . That's three hundred and twenty thousand, isn't it?”

”Look,” Zac said quietly, ”I've nothing remaining in the clockworks, but I can raise about a hundred and fifty thousand in cash fairly quickly. A day or two perhaps.”

”Cunard,” Josh said, knowing the pa.s.senger line had for some time been trying to buy a couple of the Devrey piers.

”Probably.”

Zac had been struggling to keep the Devrey a.s.sets whole for years. Now, because of Josh, Zac's defenses were about to be breached. And whatever was happening to Mollie, that was his fault as well. ”d.a.m.n! d.a.m.n! d.a.m.n!” It was a litany of impotent rage and frustration. ”The b.a.s.t.a.r.d knew exactly what to ask for and when to do it. In good times I could sell something else to raise the cash. With the market as it is . . . It could take weeks.”

”What b.a.s.t.a.r.d?” Zac asked. ”Clifford?”

”I think so, but . . . I'm not sure, Zac. I can't be.” His good leg was about to collapse. Josh hobbled to where he could catch hold of one corner of the desk and swung himself into his chair. ”I've told you about Mama Jack's Cave?”

”You've told me.”

”I was there earlier and according to the woman who owns the place, Mama Jack, there are two others to be-”

The door burst open. Ollie was red-faced and panting. ”Mr. Turner, sorry sir. But I found out something. Important. Maybe. I mean . . .”

”Come in, Ollie. Sit down. I thought you'd gone to bed. Zac, would you mind . . .” Nodding to the pitcher of water on a table across the room.

”Haven't been to bed, sir,” Ollie said, gasping out the words between noisy breaths. ”I went back to the rookeries. Found a boyo down on Seventy-Eighth said he'd been sick and that's why I didn't see him yesterday.” Zac brought Ollie a gla.s.s of water and he stopped speaking only long enough to gulp it down. ”This boyo, he says he saw the DeAngelo wagon as well. That's what he called it, Mr. Turner. Said it was a beat-up old thing. More like a wagon than a proper van. But it had a sign hanging off the side said DeAngelo and-”

The brothers exchanged looks. ”Well done, Ollie,” Zac said. ”Was that what you wanted to tell us?

Ollie shook his head. ”No, sir. That's not it. It's about the driver. The boyo said the fellow driving the van was wearing an eyepatch.” Ollie turned to Josh. ”I know lots of men do, but it's something, ain't it? It might help us get her back, mightn't it, Mr. Turner?”

It was the morning of the third full day of her captivity.

The wind had s.h.i.+fted and today she fancied the bees were more active. Buzzing loudly and, she thought, flying closer to her cage. Perhaps they were somehow aware of her sharing the rooftop with them. A bit later, when she was taken for her first visit to the bucket, she felt sunlight warm on her skin and realized that was what had stirred up the bees. It was the first time in a week there had been a break in the clouds. As for her, she might have enjoyed the warmth were she not so distracted by the pain in her feet and legs.

”Hey! You no fall down!” Her jailer grabbed her arm as Mollie stumbled.

”I can't help it. You are keeping me in such a cramped-”

”No talk. You no talk.”

She was half-shoved and half-carried the rest of the way, then she heard the sound of the curtain being pushed aside and her hands were untied. ”Here. One foot like this. The other here.” In what had become an established routine, she was set into position straddling the bucket, then-in a gesture for which she supposed she should be grateful-she heard the sound of the curtain being pulled closed.

Her hands were numb and swollen, but she could still use them to lift her skirts. Her feet were in much worse condition. The boots she'd been wearing in the garden when she was abducted were old and well worn and usually comfortable. Now they were so tight she knew her feet must be swollen as well. Perhaps she should ask to take them off. No, she would be even more helpless if she were barefoot. She leaned forward to lift her skirts and-Oh!

Her blindfold slipped down to the bridge of her nose.

Mollie caught her breath.

She had kept her word not to touch the thing because the thought of being denied the privilege of the bucket was intolerable. But now, without her having done a thing, she had been given the gift of sight.

”You done in there?”

”Not yet.”

”Hurry. I got business.”

Mollie tipped her head back. She saw a bright blue sky, but it told her nothing she did not already know, that she was being held outside on a rooftop. She looked down. The curtain didn't quite reach the tarred surface. She could see the hem of a black skirt and the scuffed and pointed toes of a woman's boots.

Her guard was not a man but a woman with a gruff voice.

She s.h.i.+vered, but this time with antic.i.p.ation rather than fear. She was stronger than she'd ever been in her life. Working each day in the garden had made her so. It was conceivable she could overpower another woman.

”You hurry!”

”I am. I'm hurrying.” She lifted her skirts with one hand, fumbled the blindfold back into position with the other. It was, she realized, the tension of the knot that had slipped. The guard-the woman as she now knew her to be-had never thought to tighten it. She was unaccustomed to her role, acting on instructions. Another tiny advantage.

She pushed the blindfold back into place, but just the merest bit higher than it had been. She had a sliver of vision beneath one eye. ”Almost done,” she called, dropping her skirts and yanking the knot tighter so the blindfold would stay as she'd arranged it. ”All right. I'm ready.”