(31/40) Murder, She Wrote: Madison Avenue Shoot Read online

“Aunt Jessica wants to talk to you, Frank. Hold on.” She handed the instrument back to me. “How are we going to find him?” she whispered to herself again. “He doesn’t know where he is. We have to find him.”

  “Frank, this is Aunt Jessica again. If you can’t tell us where you are, tell me what you can see.”

  “Nothing, Aunt Jessica. It’s dark and I can’t see out the window.”

  “But you have a window where you are?”

  “Yes, but it’s on the other side and I can’t get to it.”

  “What’s keeping you from getting to the window?” I asked, fearful he would say that his hands were tied.

  “There’s a bunch of boxes and stuff, and I’m stuck behind them.”

  “Are you in a storeroom?” I asked, thinking that if he was still in the office building, I would get Detective Chesny back to the location as soon as possible.

  “No! I’m in a truck.”

  “A truck!” Donna and Mary and I said at the same time.

  Michele, who was sitting on the edge of the bed, bounced up and down gleefully. “He’s in a truck,” he said, laughing.

  “Is anyone with you?” I asked.

  There was a pulse of static; then I heard, “. . . left.”

  “Who left, Frank? Who was with you before?”

  More static. “. . . icky.”

  “Was that Ricky? Did you say Ricky?”

  “Yeah, he’s . . . rip.”

  I remembered that Frank had told us about the grip, Ricky, the carpenter, the one who let him use his nail gun. Was Ricky the murderer? Had he kidnapped my grandnephew?

  “Did Ricky take you with him when he left?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What do you mean by ‘not exactly’?”

  “I was helping . . .” The static was getting louder and Frank’s voice was fading.

  “Frank, can you still hear me?”

  I couldn’t make out what he said.

  “The battery must be going,” I said to Donna. I tried pushing the call button again. “Frank, if you can hear me, we’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  The static stopped. Michele’s walkie-talkie was dead.

  “Oh, no,” Donna gasped.

  “We can charge the battery,” Mary said. “I have the charger upstairs. In the meantime, he sounds fine, Donna.” She wound her arm around Donna’s shoulder. “Just remember, he’s all right. He’s safe, he’s sheltered. Nothing can hurt him. That’s the important thing. We’ll find him.”

  “But how?” Donna looked at me imploringly. “Aunt Jessica? We don’t even know this Ricky’s last name. And where is this truck? What if we can’t find him? Frank will starve.”

  Michele groaned. Mary released Donna and knelt down in front of her son. “No, Michele,” she said, taking his hands. “It’s okay. Donna didn’t mean that. Frank is fine. You heard him. We’re going to find him. And we’ll give him a big dinner.”

  “I’m sorry, Michele,” Donna said. “I didn’t mean to alarm you.”

  “Speaking of dinner,” I said, addressing Michele, “we’ve kept you from yours. Why don’t you go upstairs with your mother and have your dinner, and we’ll call you as soon as Frank is home. And thank you, Michele. It was your walkie-talkie that will help us find Frank. You’re a real hero.”

  Michele gave me a big grin. “I’m glad Frank is coming home.”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  After Mary and Michele left, Donna and I sat at the dining table, the telephone in front of us.

  “We have to let Grady know,” Donna said. “And I want Frank back here tonight. Can we do it?” Her tears had dried, and a fierce resolve had taken the place of her earlier misery.

  “Why don’t you call Detective Chesny?” I said. “Tell him what we know, and ask if he’ll get word to Grady. Maybe he’ll have some suggestions on what we should do next.”

  Donna rose from the table. “I’ll take my cell phone into the bedroom so I don’t disturb you. Who are you going to call?”

  “I’m going to find out where this truck is,” I said, opening my bag and pulling out the Eye Screen folder I’d been given for the shoot.

  Donna bent down and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “You’re the best, Aunt Jessica. Brilliant. I don’t know what we’d do without you. I’d never have thought to try the walkie-talkies.”

  “It was a lucky break.”

  “I don’t believe in luck. It’s you. You’re wonderful.”

  “You can tell me that when Frank is tucked in his bed,” I said. “Go on. Make your call. We have a boy to find.”

  The bars on my cell phone were low. I attached it to its charger, which I plugged into an outlet in the kitchen. We might need it later, and I wanted to be sure it wouldn’t run out of juice, as Michele’s walkie-talkie had.

  The call sheet I had examined so closely the night before held all the information I needed, the names and phone numbers of the crew. I ran my finger down the categories on the left until I found the names of the grips, and dialed the number for Richard Pepper, the only name I figured might be “Ricky.” His voice mail answered, and I left a message telling him it was urgent that he return the call. I gave him Donna and Grady’s number as well as that of my cell phone. Next, I looked under the EQUIPMENT section for the name of the company that provided the grip supplies. It was after business hours, but an answering service picked up. Again, I left my message and numbers, and requested an immediate return call.

  I checked my watch. At this time of night it was going to be difficult to get in touch with anyone, but I intended to keep trying until I found a person who could help us locate the truck Frank was in. My next call was to Jennifer, the production manager I’d met that morning. Susan had said the production office was the nervous system that kept everything running. I figured Jennifer would know how to track down the truck if anyone would.

  “Hello. This better be important. I’m right in the middle of dinner.”

  “Hello, Jennifer. It’s Jessica Fletcher. We met this morning. I’m sorry to interrupt your meal.”

  “Oh, hi, Mrs. Fletcher. My apologies for the rudeness. Someone from the office is always calling me the second I lift my fork. What can I do for you?”

  I explained the situation, that I believed Frank was locked in a grip truck and that we didn’t know where the truck was parked.

  “How did he get in the truck?”

  I took a guess based on my brief talk with Frank over the walkie-talkie. “I think he may have been helping someone.”

  “Poor kid, he must be scared silly.”

  “He will be if we don’t rescue him soon.”

  “That guy’s in real trouble,” she said.

  “Who is?”

  “Whoever he was helping. It’s against union rules for anyone to load the truck except a member of the Teamsters, never mind a kid. Our insurance doesn’t cover that. Let me make some calls and I’ll get back to you.”

  I scoured the call sheet to see if there was anyone else who could help us find Frank. I debated calling Kevin Prendergast. He probably wouldn’t know where the truck was parked, but he could put a fire under his employees to find out.

  I was about to pick up the phone again when it rang, startling me. Evidently, I was jumpier than I let on. I picked up the receiver.

  “All the trucks are in a secure lot on the West Side,” Jennifer said without preamble. “If there’s a watchman, he may have the keys, but I’ll keep making calls to make sure. In the meantime, here’s the address.”

  Donna, who’d hurried into the room at the sound of the phone, hovered over my shoulder while I jotted down the information. I told Jennifer to call back on my cell if she needed to reach me again.

  We didn’t bother with the car, which Donna had put in their garage, but hailed the first cab we saw and gave the driver the address of the parking lot. We held hands as the taxi raced across town. We passed busy neighborhoods with tall buildings, and many people on the streets, shopping, sit
ting in cafés, leaving a movie theater. Farther on, the buildings grew lower, and fewer people were about, a man walking a dog, a couple hurrying home. At last, we entered a part of the city with long, low buildings with walls of brick devoid of any windows, and empty lots surrounded by chain-link fences with rolls of razor wire on the top. A car dealership on the corner was lit up like a carnival with plastic flags fluttering in the wind. No one was on the street.

  The cab pulled up to the address we’d provided, a concrete wall with a steel-bar fence across the only opening. A security booth was vacant and unlit. An empty police car blocked the driveway, its red light flashing and car radio blaring. The cab pulled up in back of the cruiser. We paid the driver, asked him to wait, and got out.

  “Mrs. Fletcher?”

  Donna and I both turned. A young policeman carrying a nightstick walked toward us.

  “My partner went around back to see if he could get inside,” he said. “The station is looking up the owner of the lot.”

  “Thank you, Officer.”

  “How did he know where to come?” Donna whispered to me.

  “The police were tapping your phone,” I said. “They must have overheard my conversation with the production manager.”

  We could see the vehicles in the lot through the gate. There must have been thirty of them, from small panel trucks to what looked like huge moving vans. This was not going to be easy.

  The second officer turned the corner and walked toward us, swinging a large flashlight. “There’s no access from the back,” he called out. “The lot adjoins a building. This is it. We’ve got to get in here.”

  “I got an idea,” his partner replied. He opened the trunk and pulled out a bullhorn. “What’s your son’s name again, lady?”

  “Frank,” Donna replied. “Frank Fletcher.”

  The policeman raised the bullhorn to his mouth and flipped the switch. “FRANK FLETCHER!” The sound was so loud, Donna and I jumped. “THE POLICE ARE HERE TO RESCUE YOU. WE’LL GIVE YOU INSTRUCTIONS IN A MINUTE. YOU HANG IN THERE AND WE’LL TELL YOU WHAT TO DO.”

  “What the heck is goin’ on here?” An old man, his trousers unzipped and his flannel shirt hanging open over a T-shirt, climbed from a town car parked inside the lot. What hair he had must usually be combed over his pate; now it stood straight up from his scalp.

  The policeman with the flashlight aimed its beam at his face. “Ain’t you supposed to be on duty, old man?”

  “Just takin’ a little nap. What’s the harm in that?” He smoothed his hand over his head.

  “You’re supposed to be guarding this place, not napping,” the officer with the bullhorn said. “Come on. Open up.” He banged his nightstick against the metal fence.

  “Hold your horses. I’m coming.” The old man zipped himself up, limped to the security booth, hoisted himself inside, and pressed the control for the steel gate. It rose up with a groan, the chains wrapped around the pulleys squealing in the silent night.

  “That sound could wake the dead,” Donna said to me, hands covering her ears.

  The officer handed something to his partner, who went off into the darkness behind the first row of trucks.

  The second officer approached. “Ladies, I’d appreciate it if you waited here. We may have to move some of the trucks if we can’t find him right away, and I don’t want to accidentally run anyone over.”

  “How are you going to look for him?” I asked.

  The officer showed me what was in his hand. It was a doctor’s stethoscope.

  “What’s that for?” Donna asked.

  “We’re going to knock on each of the trucks, and then put these up to the side and listen. I’m going to tell Frank to wait till he hears a knock on the truck he’s in. Then he has to yell and scream and bang on anything he can, anything to make lots of noise. We should be able to hear him with two pairs of these.”

  I chuckled. “That’s certainly clever.”

  He smiled. “When you’re a cop, you learn how to jury-rig what you need. This is relatively high-tech for the department.”

  The police started with the back row of trucks, giving Frank instructions through the bullhorn and working from the outside in, hammering on the side of a vehicle and then listening. The work created its own tempo like a cacophonous piece of music: bullhorn voice, ten seconds of loud banging, and twenty seconds of silence. At each silent break, Donna and I would hold our breath, straining to hear an answering sound. At last, when one of them reached a blue panel truck with a picture of movie lights on the side, the banging yielded a muffled yell. The policemen whooped, “We got him.”

  Donna and I jumped up and down like kids in a play-ground, hugging and crying for joy. We ran to the back of the truck, calling out to Frank, while one officer went to find the security guard to see if he had the keys.

  “Frank? It’s Mom,” Donna called out, pressing her ear to the side of the truck. “Aunt Jessica and I are here, sweetheart. Be a little patient and we’ll get you out.”

  I heard Frank’s voice answer from the inside. “Okay, Mom.”

  “We can break into the truck if we have to.” The policeman with us patted the seam where the truck’s rear doors met. “We’ve got crowbars. But we’d like to do as little damage as possible. Here he comes.”

  The second officer returned with the guard. His shirt-tail flapped in the evening breeze, but his hair was freshly combed. He was fingering through a huge ring of keys. He tried several on the rear-door lock until finding the right one.

  “Yay,” Frank called out when the doors swung open and night air filled the vehicle.

  “Hang on, son. We’ve got to move some of this equipment before you can climb out.”

  The five of us worked together to lift out the light stands, C-stands, piles of boxes, and rolls of fabric that had been crammed into the rear of the truck. With equipment scattered around us on the ground, it looked as if we could start our own production right there in the parking lot. Eventually, enough space was cleared for the officers to climb aboard and joggle around the large carts that had been loaded first, carts similar to the one Grady and I had found pressed against Betsy Archibald’s body. I shivered at the memory. But the thought flew from my mind when I saw Frank, a wide grin splitting his face. He was grimy and disheveled, and there were dark circles under his eyes to match his mother’s, but he was ebullient. “Yay! Yay! You rescued me.” He hopped to the edge of the truck bed. Donna put her arms up and he jumped into them, his weight carrying them both to the ground, giggling.

  “You okay, lady?” One of the policemen offered his hand to help her up.

  “Couldn’t be better,” Donna said, getting to her feet and brushing herself off, all the while hanging on to her son. “Thank you so much, Officers. You’ve been wonderful.”

  “Hi, Aunt Jessica,” Frank said, grinning up at me from his mother’s arms.

  “Hi, yourself, Frank. You gave us quite a scare.”

  “I knew you’d find me. I just knew it.”

  “You did?” Donna said, releasing him but keeping a hand on his shoulder.

  “Sure. But you took a long time. I got hungry. I found a Snickers in my pocket. I ate it for supper. Is that okay?” He looked to his mother for approval.

  She just nodded and smiled. “We’ll get you a big dinner when we get home.”

  Frank’s smile died away, and his brow was knit when he turned to me. “I lost my good earphones, Aunt Jessica, the red ones. It’s such a bummer. I looked everywhere, but I couldn’t find them. That’s how I got stuck on the truck. I thought I dropped them and I was looking for them when Ricky locked the door and then the truck took off.”

  “Your dad found your earphones.”

  “He did? Awesome! That is totally cool. Where?”

  “In the carpenter’s room. What were you doing in there?” I asked.

  “You should have seen how much stuff they had in there, Aunt Jessica. Ricky said it was weird. He’d never seen it so full. I was help
ing him take some of it out to the trucks.”

  “Weren’t you supposed to meet me and your father on the set where the shooting was taking place?”

  “I would’ve, but I got locked in. I couldn’t help it. I was yelling and screaming, but the guy had his music on so loud, he didn’t hear me.”

  Frank’s elation at being rescued was beginning to fade away as he realized he might be in trouble for disobeying his father.

  “Why didn’t you use your walkie-talkie to call Michele?” Donna asked him.

  “I forgot I even had it,” he replied. “I guess I was too scared to remember anything.” He glanced at his mother. “Anyway, I knew you would find me, so I just put on my iPod and waited.” He dug into his pants pocket and pulled out the little device, raising his fist so we could see it, and dropping several other items at the same time. “Michele and I put in Aerosmith and Train and other stuff, so I had a lot to listen to.” He retrieved the torn package from the Snickers bar that had fallen on the pavement, and pushed it back into his pocket with the iPod.

  I bent down to scoop up another item that Frank had dropped. “What’s this?” I asked.

  “I found it on the floor.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “In the carpenter’s room. Ricky and I were rolling stuff out to the trucks and I found it on the side of the room.” He turned to Donna. “That must be when I lost my earphones. I thought I dropped them in the truck and I was crawling around on the floor in there trying to find them. That’s when Ricky locked the door and—”

  “Yes, dear. You told us that,” Donna said, drawing him to her and patting him on the back.

  Frank buried his face in his mother’s shoulder. “I’m glad you finally came.”

  “Me, too,” Donna said, kissing the top of his head.

  “Can we go home now?”

  I decided it was not the time to question Frank. He and his parents had been through a lot. We needed to get him home, fed, and to bed, and most of all we needed to call the police station to get word to Grady that Frank was alive and well—and home. Tomorrow was another day. Tomorrow would be soon enough to ask Frank to tell his story again.

  I opened my fist and looked down at what he had dropped when he pulled the iPod from his pocket. It was a ring with a large black opal.