Pushing Up Bluebonnets

29

The man didn't put chloroform over my mouth and nose, just stifled me with a big, strong hand. I was dragged away from the driveway into the trees and out of sight. Surely Adele and Leopold were coming home soon. . . . Or maybe Simone was watching from her window. Right. The window on the other side of the house.

The man said, "I can use the drug again or you can come with us willingly. But no calling for help."

I was being given an option? Gee, how accommodating. "No chloroform," I mumbled through his fingers.

And then another guy appeared from the woods, he, too, as silent as a snake. I recognized him right away. Joe Johnson. Mr. Fake Security Guard. First thing he did was stuff a wad of something in my mouth and secure it with a bandanna tied around my mouth and head. Then assailant number one—I was betting I'd recognize him, too, when I got a look—gripped my elbows and put my hands in front of me so the faker could apply a pair of lovely little plastic cuffs. I hadn't had this much fun since Aunt Caroline's last dinner party. What did these people want?

I didn't see a weapon of any kind. They used brute force and the threat of chloroform. Very weird.

"Your keys?" Joe Johnson said.

I nodded at my right pocket. I'd left my bag in the car, not to mention the gun I swore I would carry with me. And didn't. I don't like carrying the .38 around and now I was paying the price.

Joe took my keys and tossed them to another person

who silently joined us from a different direction: Estelle. The only person besides Simone who knew where I went after leaving Richter's house. Estelle?

Joe said, "Bring her car."

Estelle nodded and pointed the remote at my Camry, disengaging the alarm.

Bring my car where? I thought. My worry meter shot farther to the danger side of the scale. They were taking me somewhere else. Not good.

The guy who grabbed me took my elbow again and we started walking. I glanced to my left and saw the stringy-haired man's face. Yup, same guy from the supermarket and the parking garage. Only his hair was clean now and tied back in a ponytail that hung down his neck.

Turned out their Jeep was hidden on a hard dirt road that wound through the woods. I didn't remember seeing an entrance to this path, but then again, Magnolia Ranch was huge. I could have missed it, or the entry could have been farther down the larger gravel road that skirted the woods.

Ponytail sat beside me in the backseat. Joe Johnson drove. Whatever was in my mouth was absorbing every bit of saliva and becoming a soggy, disgusting lump of whatever. Gauze, maybe?

Though I didn't turn around, I heard what was probably my car bumping along behind us. For some reason I worried about my tires. Sheesh. I'm being kidnapped and I'm thinking about my car? Was this how my mind was choosing to calm me down? By making me think about something as stupid and mundane as tires? If so, it was working. Then I got even more silly, thinking, Three against one? No problem, Abby. You can take them.

Five minutes later we came to a shack that sat off the road among the trees. The small structure was built with wood now gray with age. Planks slanted precariously or were missing altogether. Not a great place to hide a kidnap victim while you ask for the ransom, I thought. Too close to the ranch. Maybe this wasn't about ransom. Maybe this was all about JoLynn. Yes. Estelle was the watchdog inside the ranch—a new employee, if I remem bered right. Joe Johnson replaced the security guard to get close to JoLynn, and the other guy? I was guessing I'd been his assignment.

Ponytail helped me out of the backseat and we all went inside the shack through a squeaky half door. The place was completely empty—no furniture, no old appliances or stoves. Nothing. But it was cool and smelled of the surrounding pines.

Johnson carried in a blanket from the Jeep and laid it out on the filthy wood floor. "Time to talk," he said.

Talk? I love to talk. Beats getting killed every time. And talking required that they remove this miserable gag. Tethered hands held out in front of me, I squatted, then sort of fell back on my bottom. That's when I realized they might be the ones doing all the talking.

"You have been a thorn in my side, Abby Rose," Johnson said as he joined me on the floor. "No pun intended."

A funny guy. Great.

Estelle and Ponytail sat on either side of me, and that's when I realized Estelle held my bag. Now I was getting pissed off. First my car and now my purse?

She opened the bag and took out my gun. "I found this in the glove compartment."

Joe held out his hand and Estelle handed him the Lady Smith. He looked at the .38 with disgust and set it down behind him. Then he said, "My brother will remove the gag. Trust me, no one can hear you cry out from this spot in the woods. But the cuffs have to stay on. I know about your exploits, what a capable young woman you are. You might run."

Ponytail removed the gag and didn't seem bothered by handling the slimy ball of whatever from my mouth. He tossed it in a corner and stuffed the bandanna in his jeans pocket. I wished I were wearing jeans rather than capris, because the mosquitoes were already on the attack.

"Thank you," I said. I am not usually polite to my abductors, but I'd learned from experience not to make them unnecessarily angry. They can usually get worked up without my help.

Estelle removed the necklace picture and the drawing of Ponytail from my bag now.

"The Altoids are way at the bottom, if that's what you're looking for," I said. "Ponytail here could use one."

She smiled as she smoothed the papers in the middle of our little circle.

Johnson looked at his brother. "Way too good of a likeness, Nick. This worries me."

"Why?" I said. "Is he in some database? Are you worried the police will find him? Because they will, you know."

Johnson said, "Unfortunately, that's not the kind of database he's in." He pointed at his temple. "He's in this kind of database, in someone's memory. Now, can you keep quiet so I can tell you something important?"

Me? Keep quiet? Guess he didn't know me as well as he thought. "Answer this first. Why did you do it? Had she conned you out of money?"

Johnson looked completely confused.

"That's her thing," I said. "You know, that girl in the coma? The one you wanted to sneak in and finish off? She's a con artist."

Johnson's neck reddened. Didn't I just tell myself not to piss off my kidnappers? And yet I'd gone and done it anyway.

"You don't know the first thing about her," Johnson said. "You listen to me or I'll put the gag back on. I am being forced to trust you, something I did not wish to do. But circumstances and your persistence have forced me to take these measures."

He talks funny, I thought. Stilted . . . with a trace of an accent. Nick, too, now that I'd heard him say more than a sentence.

Estelle said, "I followed you when you said you wanted to meet with Simone. I listened at the door. The girl is clueless. You should have left her out of this business."

"I'm feeling pretty clueless myself right now," I said.

"Then let me clear things up for you. I am JoLynn's father," Joe Johnson said.

I blinked, too stunned to speak. Her father?

"And," he went on, "if this investigation of yours goes any further, you will be putting her in serious danger. I might not be able to protect her again."

"Protect her?" I said, trying to figure this out.

Johnson said, "This is her uncle—you heard me call him Nick, but that is not his real name. Estelle is Nick's daughter."

"Let me guess? Not her real name, either." Three mosquitoes were feasting on my calf and I slapped at them awkwardly with my tethered hands. "So you're all JoLynn's biological family?" I took a look at the three of them and saw a hint of resemblance to JoLynn— especially in Estelle, who I was betting wore all that makeup and changed her hair color for that very reason. What the hell was this about?

"Yes, we are her family," Johnson said.

"The family that abandoned her in a bus station eleven years ago?" The anger that rose in my throat surprised me. "What kind of people are you?"

I could tell my words stung Johnson, and Nick bent his head.

Estelle was the one who spoke. "JoLynn knows she wasn't abandoned. She knew her parents were protecting her."

"How's that protecting her? She's been through hell." Yup, I was eating fire and spitting smoke now.

"If you promise never to speak of this conversation again, speak of it to anyone, then I will tell you her story. But I must have your word." Perspiration dampened the front and underarms of Johnson's T-shirt, and thin rivers of sweat wound down from his head to his neck.

"What will you do if I don't promise? Kill me?" Maybe defiance wasn't the right approach, but I couldn't understand why they'd done this to a child. No explanation could possibly be acceptable.

"If you won't promise us this, then we will disappear. We must go soon anyway, get away from JoLynn. Sadly, if you speak of us to others, JoLynn's blood may be on your hands." Johnson's eyes held mine, waiting for my answer.

"On my hands?" I said. "Let me get this straight. You want me to give up on this case, let a killer go free?"

"You mean Kent Dugan's killer?" Johnson said.

"Yes," I said. "Which one of you got rid of him after he harmed JoLynn?"

"We don't kill people, Ms. Rose. We do not know who was responsible for his death. And if you promise to remain silent, you will understand why we have no interest in harming you."

He could be lying, but I didn't think so. No matter what, I'd do what was right, promise or not. "I promise. Now tell me the truth."

"I see the skepticism in your eyes, but once you hear what we have to say, I believe you will keep this secret," Johnson said. "You are a good person."

"You get a kick out of drugging and kidnapping good people?" I raised my eyebrows in inquiry.

"That was unfortunate, but we thought a warning might make you give up," Nick said. "We were wrong."

"Tell me this big secret," I said. "Because people are probably already looking for me. I'm supposed to be at the ranch."

"Estelle left a note for Mr. Richter before she went to see what was happening between you and Simone. She wrote that you wanted to see the town and since Estelle's work was done, she agreed to show you, and then perhaps the two of you would get something to eat."

"You think they'll buy that? Pretty lame, but go ahead. Talk." I no longer felt afraid. Maybe this was another form of denial, a way to feel safe while I was wearing plastic handcuffs and sitting in a shack in the woods. At least Nick left the chloroform in the car.

"First let me tell you that my brother and I came from Europe when we were young men, brought to the country by a man in Chicago who wanted us to work for him. We were jewelers by trade, like our father and his father before."

I glanced at the picture of the little jeweled owl.

Estelle noticed this and said, "JoLynn's father made that for her. He didn't want her to forget she was a wise and special girl." She looked at Johnson. "Can I show her?"

He nodded and Estelle pulled the necklace from her skirt pocket and put it in my palm. "The picture doesn't do it justice."

I stared down, bent my fingers and touched the canary eyes and the rows of tiny diamonds. "It's really . . . very beautiful," I said.

"I will continue," Johnson said. "My wife and I had only one child, our daughter, who now calls herself JoLynn. We made very little money working for this jeweler—both my brother and I in the same place. Our boss was not a nice man. Not an honest man. I was designing at night—sketching rings, pendants, bracelets—and waiting for the day when we could save enough to leave his employ, to get citizenship and go out on our own." He swallowed, seemed to be welling with emotion now.

Nick took over. "But the poor child was sick. Very sick. Her heart." He patted his chest with his palm. "She needed an operation. But when my brother told this man who brought us to America, he said we could not take her to the charity hospital for the operation. He said our visas weren't real. We were illegal. We would be deported and that meant JoLynn would never get the help she needed. Not in our country."

"Where is your country?" I asked. They sounded Russian, maybe.

"Some things are unimportant to this story," Johnson said. "You do not need to know—that way you cannot tell anyone."

"She got her operation, though," I said. "That much is certain."

"She did," Johnson said, "in another city. Not Chicago. We had to leave there."

"Because . . . ?" I said.

"Because we stole, stole for JoLynn. To save her." Johnson hung his head. "This was a bad thing done for a good reason. An American Tragedy." He looked up and met my eyes, smiled a little.

"You stole from this jeweler?" I said.

"No. We thought we could not steal from him. He would know who did this crime and why. He would send us back to our country. We would be disgraced. But we knew he bought and sold diamonds on the black market. Diamonds are very easy to smuggle. So easily hidden." Johnson paused, took a deep breath and wiped his sweaty forehead with his forearm. "We would have been better off taking the diamonds right from him. But we learned this lesson too late."

"You took them from one of his customers, someone who knew they'd been smuggled into the country?" I said.

"Yes, Abby. This is the mistake we made." I was looking at a nearly broken man and yet there was still strength in his eyes when I got past the sadness.

"What happened?" I said quietly. "Did this person you stole from come after you?"

"You have no idea. He is still after us. And he killed my wife . . . left a note on her body that JoLynn was next. He would find us and he would slit her throat for what we had done."

I felt the hairs rise on my arms. "This man was a criminal, then?"

"Yes. A career criminal," he said.

"In other words, the mob," Estelle whispered. "He didn't care about the diamonds. It was about revenge. You do not steal from the Chicago mob."

I sighed heavily. "You gave up your daughter to hide her, make sure she was away from you?"

"Yes. We learned Texas has the closed files. She would be adopted—she would have a good home, a new name. A safe place to grow up."

Oh my God, I thought. We failed her miserably.

Johnson said, "But the pull of your only child is like an ocean current, Abby. Before we left her, we told her we had someone to help us. The diamonds weren't all spent, you see. This person we paid agreed to send us messages about her."

"Someone in the CPS system knew about her? Knew about her situation?" I couldn't believe it.

"This is a country where money is more important than blood. More important than a sick child. I will not tell you his name, but only that he died from a heart attack a year ago."

I could find out who he was through Penny, but what good would that do now? "Let me guess. By the time JoLynn aged out of foster care, you began watching over her yourself."

He nodded. "She was so lost. My heart was breaking as I watched her struggle—but I couldn't watch her all the time. I asked my brother and his daughter to help me."

Nick spoke up again. "We didn't want this evil man in Chicago to find her. We had to keep our distance. We travel, take odd jobs. And keep coming back to make sure she's all right."

"Do you know what her first job was?" Johnson said. "A clerk in a jewelry store in the mall. Maybe this was her way of saying, 'Come and get me. I'm right where you think I might be.' I worry about that part of her, the part that wants to come back to us."

I closed my eyes, no longer feeling the insect stings or the tight plastic on my wrists. This information was so overwhelming, I needed time to take it all in. Could I help these people somehow? Bring their fractured family back together? I didn't know. And I also didn't know how any of this pertained to Kent Dugan's murder. I said, "Did you know that JoLynn moved in with a criminal? I'm talking about Kent Dugan, of course."

Estelle said, "We knew. One of us is always close. My uncle was very worried after he watched Dugan and surmised he was a criminal."

"Did you know he tried to kill her?"

"We knew he found her and this was a worry," Johnson said.

"How did you know?" I asked.

"Because I saw him," Estelle said. "I followed JoLynn when she left Kent Dugan, took the job with the Richters to keep tabs on her. Like Mr. Dugan, we have become quite good at creating names and backgrounds. She was pretending to be someone she wasn't and we didn't understand, but JoLynn was safe here. Or so we thought."

"When did you see Dugan?" I asked.

"Right before her crash," Estelle said. "But I didn't know he did something to her car. I learned from listening to you and the chief, to Mr. Richter's conversa tions with others. And when Mr. Richter said he wanted to find out about JoLynn's past to help protect her, we knew we had to stop you."

"But you are very good at what you do, Abby," Johnson said. "Your e-mails from this Penny person at CPS. I was very, very worried."

"Are you saying you hacked into my system?" I felt my face heat up. How? I'm no novice when it comes to computers and thought my system was as safe as possible. But I also know it's not impossible to hack into home computers, just like it's not impossible to get into government sites.

"I see this makes you angry," Johnson said. "But I had no choice. I have learned many skills in the last eleven years, some of them from people you do not want to know about."

"You and your family drugged me, scared me, invaded my privacy and . . . and"—I held up my hands—"tied me up. That's wrong. You don't have the right to do that."

"It is wrong, yes. We do not deserve your forgiveness for these things. Our job is to keep JoLynn safe."

"But you haven't succeeded," I said, not bothering to keep my voice down. "Did it dawn on you that someone in the Richter family talked to Kent Dugan when he came around here? That Dugan offered this person information about JoLynn's recent stint as an identity thief, probably for cash?"

From the look on Joe Johnson's face, I was betting he had no idea. "What are you saying? How does this mean we haven't succeeded? Mr. Dugan died."

I said, "Mr. Dugan was murdered, probably because he failed to kill JoLynn and would probably be caught for that attempt on her life. And then he might just spill his guts to the first cop he talked to about how someone here, on this ranch, asked him to get rid of her."

Silence followed. Their turn to absorb information.

Finally Estelle said, "I saw Dugan, but never saw him talk to anyone. He hung around in the woods, watched JoLynn when she was riding. My uncle was preparing to deal with him, make sure he left her alone, but he was too late. She was injured and we were so frightened for her."

Johnson said, "The newspaper said nothing about a murder. They said Mr. Dugan was found in a bayou." He thumped his head. "I should have known we couldn't be so lucky as to have him simply die."

I realized I was hanging on to the necklace for dear life. "Why did you have this, Estelle?"

"Because you searched her room and missed this. We worried you'd come back, or the policeman would do his own search. JoLynn had hidden it in a pocket near the head of the bed."

I looked at Johnson. "You thought that somehow I or Chief Boyd could trace this necklace back to you?"

"As I said, you are a very good investigator. We didn't know what you might be able to learn from it. I have foolishly sold similar pieces when we needed money. Like a painting, some jewelry tells much about the creator. I didn't want you to track me through my work."

"This is important to JoLynn," I said. "Why not put it back where you found it, Estelle?"

Johnson said, "I see you care very much about my daughter. It's in your eyes. Please help us protect her. Please keep our secrets."

"For now, I will. But if you've lied to me and I find out you had anything to do with Kent Dugan's death, all bets are off. He wasn't a good man, but he didn't deserve to be murdered."

Johnson said, "Then all bets are on. Thank you for helping my daughter. Thank you a million times." He took out a pocketknife and cut off the cuffs. Then he handed me my gun.