On the Wings of Murder Read online

  Ellie felt a surge of hope. The feeling faded quickly when she saw the boat. It looked far too small to hide her grandmother. Maybe this really is a wild goose chase, she thought. The boat’s name seemed like a cruel jab.

  Her phone rang and she checked the caller ID automatically. Her heart nearly stopped when she saw who it was. Her grandmother was calling her.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  * * *

  Nonna

  Ann Pacelli had decided that she did not enjoy being kidnapped. The men were nothing but rude. One of them had even shoved her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been shoved. She tried to keep her spirits up by telling herself that Ellie would find a way to rescue her, but it was difficult. She hoped that her granddaughter had found her watch. She had been trying to tell her that she was okay and wasn’t hurt.

  She had kept her mouth shut while they loaded her into a van. She sat in the back and tried not to choke on the cigarette smoke that drifted from the front. Maybe she had made a mistake by insinuating that she came from a wealthy family. What if they asked Ellie for a million dollars? There was no way she would be able to come up with that sort of ransom. Maybe she should hint that her family wasn’t that fond of her after all. No—then they might just kill her.

  I need to escape before they make the ransom call, she thought. It couldn’t be that hard, could it? These men were bound to underestimate an old woman like her. Although, maybe she was one that overestimated herself. An eighty-five-year-old woman had no business trying to run away from kidnappers. Well, an eighty-five-year-old woman had no business being kidnapped in the first place.

  “I hope you don’t get seasick,” said one of the men, leering back at her. “If you do, you’re cleaning it up yourself.”

  “We should just kill her, Tony,” the other man said, looking at the scarred man. He was the one who was driving. “What if she starts screaming when we get to the marina? I’m not going to prison over some old lady.”

  “If we kill her right now, we can’t get the ransom,” Tony said. “That’s a hundred-grand split between the three of us. That’s not petty cash. If you don’t want your third, feel free to leave. Marco and I are happy to split it fifty-fifty.”

  “I dunno, man. Is it worth going to prison over $30,000? There’s gotta be a less risky way to get some extra cash.”

  “Look, no one’s going to believe her even if she looks them right in the face and tells them she’s been kidnapped. She’s ancient. If she makes a scene, just tell people that she’s your grandma and she forgot to take her meds.”

  Ann didn’t like being treated differently just because of her age, but in this situation, it may actually be good for her. If they underestimated her, it could only work in her favor.

  Before they got out when they reached the docks, the man with the scarred face pulled a gun out and let her take a nice, long look at it. He told her to walk naturally with them down to the boat, and if she didn’t, he’d shoot her and dump her body in the water. She agreed to behave herself.

  Tony grabbed her elbow. To an outsider it might look as if he was he supporting her, but she could feel his fingers digging into her skin. She put on a brave face and followed them out onto the docks. They led her to a nice, large yacht. He made her go first down the stairs, then directed her through a door to a bedroom. There, he made her sit down on a chair by the vanity. It was bolted to the floor. He tied her hands together and her ankles to the chair legs. The knots were tight, and she knew that she would be extremely sore before long. He left her alone, locking the door behind him.

  She had tried working the knots for a little bit, but they were too tight for her to budge. She told herself that she was just conserving energy, but truth was that she simply couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. Despite the discomfort, Ann fell asleep quickly. She was exhausted.

  The next morning, one of the men brought her breakfast: pancakes and eggs from a fast food restaurant. He undid her wrists so she could eat, then untied her legs so she could use the bathroom. One of them stood guard outside the door while she took care of the necessities. She considered locking herself in, but couldn’t see any benefit to it. They would get through the door eventually, and would be angry when they did.

  When the man went to retie the knots, she flinched. “I’m sorry, but it was so tight last time. I could barely walk afterward. Can you do it just a little bit looser this time?”

  “Does she even need to be tied up, man?” the man asked, looking over to the one who was standing guard by the stairs. “I mean, where would she go? The door is going to be locked, and she can’t fit out the window. There’s nothing in this room that she could use to hurt us. Everything is bolted down.”

  “Tony said to tie her up.”

  “Tony’s not here. I’m the boss when he’s gone, remember? She looks like my grandma. I’m not tying her to a chair.”

  “Fine, but it’s on your head if she gets out.”

  He made her promise not to try to escape, then locked her in the bedroom. Nonna took advantage of her freedom and searched the entire room, but he had been telling the truth when he said that there was nothing that she could use to hurt them or to escape. There were the bed linens, and she supposed that she could try to strangle one of them, but she knew that she didn’t have the strength. With no other options, she sat on the bed and waited for whatever would happen next to happen.

  It was hours before the man with the scarred face reappeared. He had her cellphone in his hands.

  “We’re going to call your granddaughter. I’m going to hand the phone to you and you are going to tell her that you are alive and comfortable. Tell her you’re not even tied up. We’re treating you nice. Say anything else, and it won’t end well. Understood?”

  She nodded. He placed the call. She listened as he demanded ransom from her granddaughter; it wasn’t as much as she had feared, but it was more than she thought they would be able to afford. When he handed the phone to her, it was a relief to hear her granddaughter’s voice. She did her best to assure Ellie that she was okay, but she could hear how worried she sounded.

  The man took the phone back and spoke into it once more before hanging up. After that, he left her alone again for hours. Nonna managed to fall asleep. She woke up to hear a conversation above her head. The men were talking on the deck.

  “Think the lady will pay?”

  “If she doesn’t, we’ll just toss the body to the ocean. Her loss.”

  “Are we actually going to let her go if she does?”

  “Of course not. We’ll kill her once we have the money. Her granddaughter might want to talk to her again, which is why we’re keeping her alive for now.”

  Ann shivered. She had known that it would likely come to them killing her, but it was still chilling to hear them say it out loud. It was as if they were talking about what to do with a sick dog. It sealed the issue for her. She had to escape, and the sooner, the better.

  She got her first chance to do something when they brought her dinner. The man with the scar was the one who brought it, and he stood guard while she ate. He didn’t seem to trust her alone with a knife and fork. He stretched, and she saw her cellphone poking out of the loose pocket of his gym shorts.

  She stood up with the plate, took a shaky step forward, then fell to her knees. The plate shattered on the floor and her food everywhere. The man cursed.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “It’s my arthritis, I don’t have my medicine. I’ll clean it up.”

  She tried to stand, but failed. Tony gave a snarl of annoyance and pulled her roughly to her feet. She took advantage of the closeness to slip the phone from his pocket. He didn’t seem to notice. She quickly stuffed it into her own pocket.

  “Get in here and clean this up,” he snapped. One of the other men hurried through the door. Ann sat on the bed, watching as he cleaned the mess. At last, they left and shut the door behind them, leaving her alone in the room with her cellphone.


  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  * * *

  “Ellie, thank goodness you answered.”

  “Nonna, where are you?”

  “I’m on a boat somewhere. I see other boats out the window. They took me to a marina, but they didn’t say which one.”

  “She’s definitely in the marina,” Ellie said to Linda. “Where? Can you describe other boats that you see?”

  “There’s a sailboat next to us. There are some people on it with a boombox. I can’t see much else.”

  “She’s next to a sailboat with music playing on it,” Ellie said to Linda. “Let’s keep looking.”

  “Are you guys here?” Nonna asked. “Ellie be careful. One of them has a gun. I saw him and one of the other men walk off down the dock, but he could be back at any moment. They’re planning and killing me, whether or not you give them the money.”

  “That’s what Russell said. I tried to get the money anyway, but I couldn’t do it in time.”

  While she was talking, she was following Linda down the docks. Even with her grandmother on the phone, it was an impossible task. How would she find one boat out of a thousand?

  “Nonna can you give us a sign?” she asked.

  “A sign? How?”

  “I don’t know. Is there window you can open, and maybe wave your hand out of it?

  “Oh, I have an idea. Hold on.”

  She waited. It seemed to take forever before her grandmother returned to the phone.

  “Okay, I opened the porthole window and hung a sheet out of it. It’s windy, you should see it flapping around.”

  After another minute of frantic searching, Ellie spotted a sheet hanging out of a yacht’s window. The name on the side declared it the Swan Song. The rubber band that had been squeezing her chest for hours finally loosened. She could breathe again. “Okay, we’re coming to get you. Hold tight. Pull that sheet in so they don’t notice it; we know which boat you’re in now. I love you, and I’ll see you soon.”

  She moved forward, ready to storm boat on her own, but Linda put a hand on her shoulder. “Ellie, we should call the police. These are bad men. There is no way we can do this on our own.”

  “Here.” She handed the phone to Linda. “You call them and tell them which boat it is. I need to go and see what I can do. She’s my grandmother, and she’s depending on me.”

  Ellie hurried away before the other woman could argue. She had one advantage over the men; they didn’t know what she looked like, but thanks to the security footage, she had an idea of what they looked like. They wouldn’t be expecting her to come to the boat alone. If anything, they would be keeping an eye out for the police and would completely ignore a single tourist asking for directions.

  She pulled her sweatshirt off and tied it around her waist before applying sunscreen heavily to her shoulders and face. She wanted to look enough like a lost tourist that they wouldn’t look too closely at her face and recognize features she and her grandmother shared.

  She walked directly toward the yacht. She saw only one man on deck. He was standing at the bow of the ship, looking towards the parking lot. She wondered if the police had arrived yet. She hoped so—she might need their help very soon.

  “Excuse me,” she called up in her most ditzy voice. “Can you help me?”

  The man looked down at her. “What do you need?” he asked

  “I’m supposed to meet some of my friends on a boat. They gave me directions, but I got turned around and now my phone is dead. I really need to use the bathroom, and I need to charge my phone.”

  “I can’t help you. There’s a help desk at the office. Go there.”

  “Can I just use your bathroom? Please? This boat is so nice, I know it must have one. I don’t want to walk all the way back to the office on shore. If I could just plug my phone in for a minute, I could call my friends and get this all straightened up.”

  “Look,” the man said. “This isn’t my boat. I can’t let a stranger on board.”

  “I’ll be just a minute,” she said, letting her voice creep into a pitiful whine. “Please?”

  The man sighed. “Fine, climb aboard. Don’t touch anything. Like I said, it’s not my boat. I’ll show you where the bathrooms are. My grandmother is sleeping, so keep quiet.”

  She followed him beneath the deck. It was a nice yacht; even in her current situation she could admire that. He showed her to the bathroom and told her she could plug her phone in by the sink. She shut the door, and got the sense he was standing right outside of it, keeping guard. She leaned her forehead against the mirror, closed her eyes, and tried to figure out what to do next. Her grandmother was only a room away. She just needed to get rid of one guard before rescuing her. Her eyes opened as inspiration struck. She remembered seeing a lock on the inside of the door that lead below deck. If she could get him to go up the stairs first, then she could lock him out.

  Ellie flushed the toilet and ran the water. After a moment, she stepped out.

  “Thank you so, so much,” she said. “I texted my friends and I know where to find them now. I feel so much better.”

  “Right, well you better leave now. Go on upstairs.”

  He guided her towards the stairs and followed closely behind her as she went up. Ellie waited until they had both come out onto the deck, then said, “Oops, I left my phone charger in the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”

  She rushed down the stairs before he could move, and slammed the door in his face, turning the lock. She ignored his angry pounding on the door and started calling her grandmother’s name.

  “In here,” the older woman said. “I’m in here.”

  Ellie opened the door. She pulled her grandmother into a tight hug, then stepped back to look at her. The older woman was a bit rumpled, but didn’t look too much worse for the wear.

  “Thank goodness,” Ellie said. “I was afraid I would never see you again.”

  “I knew you would rescue me,” Nonna said. “Hurry, we should leave. The man with the gun could be back soon.”

  At that moment, Ellie heard the door at the top of the stairs slam open. Footsteps pounded down the stairs. She pulled her grandmother back into the bedroom and shut the door, leaning her shoulder against it. They were trapped.

  The man yelled at her to open the door, but she ignored him. She focused everything she had on keeping the door shut as he slammed against it. He had managed to break a lock on the door upstairs, but she was proving to be a bit tougher than that. At last, he fell silent. After a moment, she heard a muffled voice, as if he was having a one-sided conversation.

  “He must be calling the man with the scarred face,” Nonna whispered. “His name is Tony.”

  They waited maybe ten minutes, but it felt like an eternity. Ellie heard footsteps again. There was a knock on the door, then a man spoke.

  “I have a gun, and if you don’t open the door by the count of three, I’m going to start shooting through it,” he said. “At this point, I don’t really care who it hits. One… Two…”

  Ellie motioned to her grandmother and they both backed into the corner of the room. A shot went off. The bullet ripped through the door and buried itself in the bed in the center of the room. The man slammed the door open, and Ellie charged him. She was trying to knock him off his feet, but he was too large for that. She did manage to knock him off balance enough that he stumbled back a step or two. She tried to wrestle the gun from him, but he was far stronger than she was. Suddenly something white and billowy draped itself over his face and pulled tight. He let go of the gun in a frantic effort to pull the sheet away from his head, but her grandmother wasn’t letting go.

  The other man ran towards them, but Ellie kicked out just as he reached them. Her foot connected with something soft and he fell over onto the side, groaning in pain. Ellie managed to grab the gun just as she heard more footsteps come pounding down the stairs.

  “Police!”

  She laid the gun on the ground in front of her and raised her hands. Nonna l
et go of the sheet and backed away. Seeing the officers aiming their guns at him, the scarred man raised his own hands above his head and fell to his knees.

  Ellie had never been so happy to see a bunch of men and women in uniform in her life. She knew that she had Linda to thank for this. It looked like she and her grandmother were going to get out of this alive.

  EPILOGUE

  * * *

  Ellie looked over her grandmother. The older woman’s hair was freshly cut and styled, and she looked energetic and happy. She was sitting in the passenger seat of their rental car with her purse on her lap. It was Monday morning, and their vacation was just about over. The rest of their trip had actually been quite pleasant. Ellie had given her grandmother her watch back, and had dropped off a basket of muffins for Billy that morning as thanks for all his help. The night before, she and Nonna had treated him, Sandra, and Linda to dinner.

  She was extremely proud of the older woman. Her grandmother had kept her wits about her, when even Ellie had given in to panic. It was due in part to her quick thinking that they had been able to find her at the marina. If it hadn’t been for her grandmother’s quick thinking—stealing the phone and letting the sheet flap out the window—things might have turned out differently.

  She knew that she owed Linda and Sandra everything. They were on their way to Oceanside Pizza and Wings right now, where she was planning to make an offer that should end up repaying both women for their help many times over.

  Linda beamed when she saw the two of them walk through the door. “I’m so glad you stopped in before you left. It was wonderful meeting you both. I hope those terrible men spend a very long time in jail for what they did to you.”

  “We came in to thank you,” Ellie said. “You helped me look for my grandmother, and it was thanks to you that the police arrived when they did. They probably saved our lives.”

  “Oh, I don’t need thanks. Anyone would have done that.”