I looked at him in disbelief. “We know he’s been taken by Hocus! We know he arrested two of them for conspiracy to commit murder!”
“These fools are getting too big for their britches,” he said easily. “That’s how Frank caught on to them in the first place. Now, we’re going back to my car, and I’m going to call for some help.”
“Shouldn’t we… shouldn’t we look in the trunk?”
“You have keys to the Volvo with you?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you give them to me?” When I hesitated, he said, “You know that Hocus has used explosives, right?”
I nodded.
“I think we should wait until the bomb squad gets here and checks the car out first. It would be just like Hocus to think it was funnier than hell to blow the damned newspaper to kingdom come.”
“But if Frank is in there….”
“If you’re going to get locked in a trunk, a Volvo’s one of the better ones to be locked in. They have a hole for skis. He’ll have plenty of air. Trust me.”
Although I had seen the ski slot in the trunk, I thought he was probably bluffing about the air supply. It didn’t matter. “If he’s in there, Cassidy, he’s dead anyway.”
“Don’t go talking that kind of talk, now.”
“I don’t think he’s dead. He’s alive.”
“You got a feeling about that?” he said, steering me toward his car.
I did, but hell if I was going to talk to him about it. “No, logic. Someone went to a lot of trouble today. They lured my husband out to Riverside, to a house the police here knew he was going to. They took him from there, then brought his car all the way back here. They left a message for me in his car, left his car in a place where I was likely to find it. Perhaps not this soon, but by Monday morning.” I looked up along the roof of the Wrigley Building, which houses the
He stopped and studied me for a moment. “Not bad. I’m with you — Frank has value to them as a hostage. On the other hand, the violence by this group has been escalating, and they think of themselves as tricksters. If I think like a trickster, I say the car could be booby-trapped.”
When we reached his car I said, “That was you following me, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. Sorry if I scared you.”
He called Bredloe at home.
“I’m on a cellular phone, here, sir,” he began. “At her place of employment…. Yes, we can go into that later, on a land line. Her husband’s car is here in the parking lot, with a message from our prankster friends…. Yes…. I’d prefer not to go into the possibilities on an unsecured line, sir, but thought you’d want to get things rolling. I want to keep an eye on the car so that nobody bumps into it until your brother brings the dogs.”
There was a pause.
“Yes, sir. Exactly…. Thank you.”
As he started to dial another number I asked, “Bredloe’s brother is bringing dogs? What’s that all about?”
“A little code that we’ll have to stop using after tonight, I suppose…. The bomb squad is part of the sheriff’s department. They use dogs to sniff out explosives….” He spoke into the phone. “Hank? Get everything you can on the pranksters…. Yeah, I Know. Bredloe will help.”
I remembered my promise to Jack and asked Cassidy to pass word along to him that I was okay.
By the time he finished the call, a black-and-white pulled into the parking lot. Cassidy asked the officers to keep everyone away from the Volvo until the bomb squad arrived.
He turned to me. “You all right?”
I nodded.
“Let’s go into the building and use a phone in there, okay?”
The night security man was already quite excited because he had seen the cruiser pull into the lot. When Cassidy showed him his detective shield, the guard pulled in his stomach and started hitching up his belt.
Before he could snap a salute or sing the police auxiliary anthem, I told him to expect the parking lot to be besieged by law enforcement. He decided to call the editor, Winston Wrigley III.
Wrigley and I have a strained relationship in the best of times, and between two and three in the morning is never going to rank as one of the best of times. After a minute or two of listening to him bawl me out, I handed the phone over to Cassidy.
“Come on down,” Cassidy drawled, a little more heavily than usual, I thought, “but be careful. Y’all might get yourselves launched outta here like a roman candle. Up to you. I gotta get going now. I cain’t talk to you and keep your building from blowing up at the same time.”
When he hung up, the security man was bug-eyed. “Should I evacuate the building?”
“Probably be a good idea. The bomb squad will be here any minute now. In the meantime, maybe you could ask folks to stay away from that end of the parking lot.”
