Miranda Bliss - Dying for Dinner

“He’s nervous, but he shouldn’t be.” At my side, Eve didn’t look nearly as edgy as I felt. “ Tyler ’s got everything under control,” she said. “There are cops stationed at all the doors. There are cops backstage and in the sound booth of the amphitheater, and even in the audience. Nobody is going to get close enough to Norman to kidnap him. Nothing’s going to happen to him.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to his cooking, either, not if we don’t get that mandoline so he can slice the onions for the French onion soup.” I glanced over my shoulder toward the RV. There was no sign of Claude. “You don’t suppose the inside of that place looks anything like the outside here, do you?” The very thought was enough to offend my sense of order, and I shivered. “How’s he ever going to find that mandoline in time?” I scanned the booths nearest to us. If one of them had a mandoline, believe me, I would have bought it with my own hard-earned money and headed straight for the amphitheater with it. The way it was, there was a super-duper cleanup mop being sold at the booth to our right, and all-organic potato chips on our left. There wasn’t a mandoline in sight.

There was no sign of Claude, either, and because the precious minutes were ticking away, I stepped around the tables that bordered his space and headed up the stairs and into the RV, with Eve right behind me.

My intuition was right on: The inside of Claude’s RV looked a whole lot like the outside space where he did business. There were boxes piled on the floor and on the table behind the driver’s seat and the built-in bench behind it. There were boxes stacked three high to our left, all along the hallwaylike space that led to a room where I could see a couple of built-in bunk beds that were stacked with boxes. I could see open packages of gadgets scattered about, and charge receipts (both new and used). I could see plastic carry bags that said Brooking Cooking on the side, and ripped-open cartons that had at one time contained everything from measuring cups to salt shakers.

I could see everything and anything-but Claude.

“Claude?” Over my shoulder, I gave Eve an “I don’t know what’s going on” sort of look and, leading the way, I sidled toward the bedroom, my back pressed to the wall of boxes. “Claude, are you all right? Did you find the mandoline? We don’t have a lot of time and-” My gasp drowned out the rest of my words.

That’s because I found Claude lying facedown on the bedroom floor. There was a quickly growing pool of blood around the gash at the back of his head.

“Oh, my gosh!” Behind me, I felt, rather than saw, Eve pull back. She never did do well with blood and gore.

I can’t say I did, either, but I knew an emergency when I saw one. I dropped down on the floor beside Claude and felt for a pulse and when I didn’t find one, I grabbed my cell phone out of my pocket. I guess I was so busy pressing the buttons on it and hoping for a cell signal that never materialized, I didn’t hear the door of the RV slam shut.

I didn’t realize Eve was gasping to find words to warn me, either. Not until I finally looked up, frustrated by my phone, and found her with one arm yanked behind her back and a knife to her throat.

I was on my feet in a flash, but I knew better than to make another move. Not when that blade was right up against Eve’s windpipe.

“Who… what?” I looked past Eve to the man who stood behind her. He was a little older than middle-aged, and bald. He looked vaguely familiar, though I couldn’t sort through my panic and fear to figure out why. I didn’t have to ask, either, but I was so taken aback and so terrified, I couldn’t keep my words to myself. “What on earth are you doing? What do you want?”

The man laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound.

“I want what I’ve always wanted,” he said. “I want what’s mine. I thought I had to go to Norman to get it, but you ladies, you’re the answer to my prayers.”

“We don’t know anything.” That was Eve talking, and I had to give her credit, what with her being able to do that while there was a gleaming knife blade pressing into the delicate flesh of her throat. “We don’t know anything about Norman, or the money, or the bank robbery or-”

My grimace came too late for her to take back her words.

“Look…” I tried to sound calm. Big points for me since by this time, I was so afraid of what might happen to Eve, so worried about Claude, and so claustrophobic, I would have leaped out the window near the bunk beds-if there weren’t boxes piled high in front of it. “Look…” I tried again. “I think you’ve got us mixed up with someone else. Eve’s right. We really don’t know anything.”

“I don’t care if you do.” The man had a handkerchief in his pocket and when he pulled it out, a strong chemical odor filled the room. He pressed the cloth to Eve’s nose and mouth, and a second later her eyes closed and she sank to the floor. “Your turn.” He stepped over her and toward me, and because of the clutter, I had nowhere to go. Because of the knife, I couldn’t fight back.

He yanked the cell phone out of my hand and tossed it over his shoulder. I saw it land in an open packing box. Then I saw the handkerchief heading for my face.

“Finally, I’ve got what I need,” I heard the man say just as the handkerchief smothered my face. My head buzzed. My vision blurred. His voice came from a million miles away. “ Norman will listen now. He has to. You’re his friends. And now, you’re my hostages.”

I DREAMED I WAS WORKING AT TRÈS BONNE CUISINE, helping a man in a black and white golf shirt who was walking down the aisles, browsing. We stopped near the soup mixes and he adjusted his thick glasses on the bridge of his nose and smiled when he found what he was looking for on a nearby shelf.

“Finally,” he said, “I’ve got what I need,” and he handed me a bottle of chloroform.

Like an icy wave, the memory washed over me and I jerked awake and gasped for breath. My eyes flew open and in that one moment, I realized why the man who’d kidnapped us looked so familiar: He was a Très Bonne Cuisine customer I’d waited on just after Greg’s murder.

Which meant all those days ago, he was hot on Norman ’s trail. He’d been following me all along-and I’d led him straight to Norman in Atlantic City and, from there, straight here to the food show.

The enormity of the realization flashed through my bloodstream and for I don’t know how long, I lay on the built-in bench in what passed for the dining area of the RV, trying to make sense of it all. It might have been easier if my mouth wasn’t fuzzy and my head didn’t pound. It might have been a whole lot more comfortable if my wrists and my ankles weren’t duct-taped.

Carefully, I shifted my weight. Since my hands were behind my back, I wobbled a bit, but I managed to sit up so I could see to my right, into the driver’s area of the RV (it was empty) and to my left and back to the bedroom (from this angle, all I could see were boxes in the hallway and what looked to be the entire contents of the display we’d seen outside the RV; there were kitchen gadgets everywhere, as if our abductor had simply opened the door and shoveled them in). Eve was similarly bound and slumped on the bench across from me. I didn’t like the pallor of her skin.

“Eve!” I realized the moment I called out to her that I was alerting our kidnapper to the fact that I was awake and that it might have been smarter not to, but I was beyond caring. How could I when Eve looked so fragile and pale? “Eve, wake up. Answer me. Are you all right?”