Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
GABE – TGI FRIDAY
Gabe was beyond cold.
His ankles ached where the plastic zip ties they’d put back on dug into his skin, and his wrists hurt from the handcuffs.
He was also well on his way to a caffeine headache.
There wasn’t any heat to be had in this place, which cemented his theory that they were in a garage or storage structure.
He was firmly restrained, and no one had offered him any coffee.
The trio—duo, really, because Althea and Randy were obviously in charge—had continued to ask him the same questions for what felt like hours.
A couple of times Gabe had convinced them to let him at least use the bathroom, which had been a total shitshow of them leaving his ankles zip-tied and handcuffing his nondominant hand to Randy.
Fortunately, he’d broken his arm when he was fifteen and still had the muscle memory to unzip his fly and take care of business one-handed.
Sidekick William had just stood around trying to look tough, but he mostly seemed cold and scared.
Hours in, Gabe had been left to his own devices with just William as his keeper.
William had sat in a corner, presumably watching Gabe to make sure he didn’t do anything funny.
For his part, Gabe had dozed and talked and tried to come up with an escape plan that wouldn’t hurt too much.
Who knew being strapped to a chair was so effective.
Althea and Randy had finally returned, and Gabe was curious to know what they’d been up to. Had they been napping? Was there an OSHA for criminals that required a lunch break? Was it morning and thus working hours for abductors?
“Can I get a glass of water?”
“Where are the paintings?” Althea demanded, ignoring the request.
“So that’s a no?”
“Where. Are. The. Paintings. I know your mother took them. She must have still had them when she died or there would’ve been whispers. Where are they?”
Gabe repeated what he’d already told her last night, word for word, tossing in a few additional questions of his own to see if he could get a reaction out of her.
Until yesterday, he’d never considered how Althea resembled an aging Cruella Deville. Cruella before Disney had rehabilitated her—or tried to. She’d hidden her real self well, for what seemed to be years, but the mask was off now. She was a hateful conniving bitch.
“Did you know that repeating the same thing but expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity?” Gabe was improvising, but he remembered the quote being something along those lines.
That comment pissed both Randy and Althea off.
Excellent. Althea had a vein across her forehead that throbbed every time Gabe said something snarky, and Randy was a wonky bottle rocket ready to explode.
They were both all talk at this point. They thought he knew where the artwork was and didn’t want to jeopardize getting their hands on it.
So, while they’d kidnapped him and were slowly freezing him to death, they weren’t going to take it further—yet.
He could handle a few bumps and bruises, a knock in the head. But if this ass-backward gang of two-and-a-half physically hurt Elton or Casey or anyone else he cared for, Gabe was officially going to lose his shit. He chose to continue with what he did best. Keep talking.
“What I don’t get, Althea, is how you managed to fool Elton. He seems to have a well-primed bullshit meter. Yet here you are, a terrible person who’s used him to get some fantasy artwork back.”
Althea eyebrows shot up, and her lips flattened into a thin line. “What are you talking about? I like Elton—I love him. All I want is that fucking art, and we’ll have enough to live like kings for the rest of our days, somewhere it doesn’t fucking rain all the time. Maybe Costa Rica.”
In her psycho dreams.
“Are you so deluded that you believe you can spirit Elton away from here? Wow, further gone than I thought. And, I have to say, I already figured you were over the edge.”
Althea’s nostrils flared. She stepped close enough that he inhaled a whiff of the powdery perfume she must have bathed in. And he sneezed. Althea stepped away, a look of disgust crossing her face.
“Sorry, my hands are—” He wiggled them, clinking the cuffs against the metal arms of the chair.
“Let’s keep talking about this. What are your next steps?
What’s going to happen when he learns that you’re a terrible person?
I don’t know where these so-called paintings are, so whatever your endgame is, I can’t help you.
Elton is going to meet your real self, and it’s going to be all over.
He’s not even going to look back. And to think he said you were going to make us fried chicken. ”
He had a figment of a thought that hardly counted as an idea about where the art might be, but he wasn’t sharing with Cruella, and he couldn’t check for himself until he got out of this situation.
“You were at the library, and the librarian didn’t see any reason not to tell me that you were looking through old microfiche. What did you find? You found something, we know it,” Randy said.
Randy was not top-notch accomplice material. Gabe knew from the malevolent glance Althea shot him that she was wishing he would disappear. Or—a hideous icy feeling akin to cold lightning crawled down his spine—she was planning for Dirty Socks Randy to disappear.
Gabe looked toward William, who was also probably approaching his expiration date as far as Althea was concerned.
He saw shelves packed with boxes labeled MRE in permanent marker lining one wall and began counting them to hide his real thoughts.
Without a distraction, he wasn’t sure his best poker face could hide his utter disgust with this person.
No wonder you ran, Heidi.
He shivered, wondering if Carla had really died in an accident.
Gabe hadn’t figured everything out yet, and maybe he never would, but he’d bet Althea’s “idiot sister” Carla had been Althea’s partner in the 201 Gallery heist. Something must have happened between the initial theft and the rest of the plan. Enter his mother.
Holly Pritchard got a job in town. Holly found a door because Holly was a big fan of Harriet the Spy and liked secrets.
Then Holly became Heidi Karne. Neither Holly nor Heidi knew how to get rid of the paintings.
She did, however—and Gabe was projecting here—know that Althea Mortine, née Pritchard, was a dangerous person, so after a few futile years of trying to fence them and thus risking exposure, she gave up and left the mystery to her son, figuring that he would be able to fend for himself.
I’m not so sure about that last part, Heidi.
“Who was the young woman who came by my house Monday?” he asked. “The one claiming to be my daughter. Was she your great-niece or something?”
Gabe recalled the photographs he’d seen hanging in the hallway of Dirty Socks’s destroyed home. Specifically, the one with a younger Randy and a toddler. That toddler could have been the young woman on his doorstep on Monday. Had she somehow been part of this plan or had she struck out on her own?
“Someone killed her and her body ended up in the bay. But you know that already, don’t you? And I’d bet my right nut you knew it before the Sheriff’s Office did.”
He stared hard at Althea. Was he exhausted and fucking cold and in desperate need of coffee?
Yes, but also oddly energized with this revelation.
He had to get Althea talking more. She’d done such a good job hiding behind the TCSO front desk for years, privy to the underbelly of the entire county, but it was time to get that villain monologue going to help fill in some blanks.
“I’d bet my left nut that having Eli Rizzi exposed was bad for your business.
Did it make you a little nervous? You know, Elton and Casey both told me that Bree Eagan and state investigators have been going through all the stored files.
Will they find your influence there too?
They will, won’t they? I can’t think of a person in a better position to help Rizzi hide what he was up to. ”
Althea waved the gun his direction. “Stop speaking now.”
Gabe wasn’t particularly worried she’d shoot him, at least not until she got the information she wanted. And Gabriel Karne excelled at talking a lot but not giving up any information.
“What are you going to do? Kill me before you figure out where the scribbles are? I don’t think so.”
“Auntie, what did you do?” Randy had gone a sickly shade of white. “You told me Mia was busy doing something for you.”
“Should I be calling you Auntie too?” Gabe asked sweetly.
Darting Randy a glance that should have eviscerated him, Althea said, “Don’t worry about your sister right now. And you”—she pointed the gun at Gabe again—“I told you to stop speaking. It’s so obvious you’re Holly’s kid. Always thought she knew it all too, didn’t she?”
“I’m worried, Auntie, very worried. Where’s Mia?”
It was nice to see that Randy cared. Hopefully, Althea was the lone psychopath in the family.
“She panicked, didn’t she? Came to the station when I’ve told you both never to approach me there,” Althea hissed.
Randy stepped backward, his eyes wide and fucking finally, scared. “Auntie.”
“Don’t you fucking Auntie me.”
In the distance, Gabe heard dogs barking again.
They’d been doing so on and off the entire time Gabe and his captors had been inside.
They sounded big, ferocious. Seriously, why dogs?
The only place locally that he knew of with a lot of dogs was Heartstone Veterinary Clinic, but he thought they were miles from Heartstone.
Eyes wide, Randy bolted. But before he got more than a few steps, Althea turned the gun she’d been pointing at Gabe toward him and squeezed the trigger.
The first shot missed but not the second.
It hit him high up in the arm, toward his shoulder, and the useless nephew went down like a proverbial sack of potatoes.
“Holy shit,” whispered William.