Kay frowned. “If the stepfather didn’t know Ian was seeing you, let alone that you taped his recollection of the night his mother died, how the hell did he connect you to Ian?”
“Ian may have confronted him with his recovered memory. Or maybe something just came out about him going to a hypnotist. I have no idea if he revealed my name, but there aren’t a whole lot of hypnotists in High Cross. Or someone in the police department could have told his stepfather I have the tape. Or he found out I stole Ian’s dog.”
Chapter Nineteen
I stared at Jack. “You stole him? Jack was Ian’s dog?” I asked at the same time Kay blurted, “The police told him?”
Bob patted his lap with one hand and Jack reared up to put his front paws there. Bob rubbed a finger along the top of his long nose. “I had to, he was starving,” he answered me first. “After I heard that Ian was dead, I didn’t know what to do. I thought of nothing else for days. If I hadn't hypnotized him, he might never have recovered that memory and would be alive.”
“He came to you for help, and you did your best,” I consoled.
“I know, but…I can't tell you how bad that feels. I decided I had to go to the police with my suspicions.”
“The High Cross police?” Kay asked.
Bob nodded. “I made an appointment with a detective. It was awful. The whole time I was explaining, he kept shaking his head. He seemed to think hypnosis is a parlor game and that I had as much credibility as someone who sends out those spam emails about hypnotizing women into bed. I'll never forget his voice when he asked me where the tape with this so-called information was. He told me to bring him the tape, and that he’d check into it, but I was sure the whole thing was headed straight for the round file.”
“Where is the tape?” I asked.
“It was in my safety deposit box at the bank. Anyway, I left the police station angry. I thought I could put it in their laps and be done with it, that they’d immediately start an investigation. Now I was more frustrated than ever.”
“Yeah, some cops can really drive you nuts.” Kay was scowling, and I didn’t think it was because of the High Cross police.
Bob continued, “I drove around trying to decide what to do. I had a copy of the tape that I could take to them. My gut feeling was to keep the original, which had Ian’s signature on the label. But that detective had made me uneasy. I can't explain it. He was just way more negative than he needed to be.”
“Maybe he’s just used to playing the bad cop role,” I put in.
“Could be, who knows. Anyway, I found myself driving up in the hills and realized that Ian’s house was somewhere close by. I circled around until I found the right street. Now I felt stupid. I hadn’t driven by someone’s house since I was sixteen and borrowed my parents’ car to cruise by some girl’s house. Just on the off chance she’d be on her front steps to appreciate how cool I was at the wheel of a ’66 Fairlane.” He shook his head and smiled a little.
“Ian’s house, when I found it, had about an acre of grass in front. The only thing out of place was this black lump in the shade of one of the bushes near the street. I slowed down and the lump moved. It lifted its head and looked at me, and my foot stomped on the brake. You’ve never seen anything so pitiful. He stood up as soon as I stopped, and he was skin and bones. Ian’s stepfather must have kicked him out of the house and left him.”
“Maybe he’d dumped him somewhere and Jack had made his way back,” I said.
“Hmmm, his paw pads were pretty worn, that could be it. Anyway, I didn’t think, I just leaned over and opened the passenger door. I called him, and he wobbled over to the car and climbed in and we drove away.”
“Jeez, this is a really bad man,” I blurted. Kay and Bob looked at me and I felt myself blushing. “Well, two murders are bad enough, but to starve poor Jack…” My voice trailed off, but Kay was nodding.
“Yeah, and I bet he did it all for money he was enjoying anyway, since he was married to Ian’s mother,” she said. “I wonder if she was going to divorce him or something. But Bob, I still want to know what happened when you got picked up last night. Who is that woman and where does she fit in?”
“And how you got away,” I added.
“Oh, that.” Bob said. “Well, to start at the end, I hypnotized her into bed.”
Chapter Twenty
“What!” Kay and I yelped together.
He remained deadpan for a moment, then grinned. “Okay, not what you’re thinking. I hypnotized her and she fell asleep. It took a while but I was able to wiggle out of the rope she had tied me up with. So I left.”
“On foot?” Kay asked.
“Yeah. Unfortunately she fell asleep with her head on her purse, and she’d put my wallet inside. I was afraid I'd wake her if I tried to get it back, so I didn’t have any money to call a cab to get back home. Her car keys were in there too, so I couldn’t take that. Plus I wasn’t sure where it was safe to go.”
“I wish I'd been there to see it,” Kay commented. “You make it sound awfully easy.”
“I'd say she had been hypnotized before. She was very suggestible. She must have been tired anyway, and once it got late it was fairly simple to put her into a trance and suggest that she have a good, long sleep.”
“Good grief,” I said, “can you do that with anyone? Hypnotize them without them knowing?” I could feel every paranoid instinct I'd ever had flaring to new life.
“No, no, of course I can't. And I wouldn’t have done it to her if I hadn't been desperate.” He looked me in the eyes. “I promise you I would never do something like that to you. I doubt if I could.”
Our gaze stayed locked until Kay broke in. “How about going back to the beginning? At least our beginning, or rather Louisa’s. Who is the woman who kidnapped you?”
Bob turned to face her. “That’s the weird thing, Kay, I don’t know. I have no idea who she is or where she fits into the picture. She had a gun—that’s how she got me out of the grocery store. You remember I went in for dog food, Louisa?”
I nodded. “I was listening to the radio and the next thing I knew you came out with this blonde and got into another car. I half killed myself getting into the driver’s seat to follow you. If you ever lock the door when I'm waiting in the car again I may shoot you myself.”
His eyes crinkled in a smile. “I’ll try to break myself of the habit,” he promised. “I wanted you to be safe.”
“She was safer than you, anyway,” Kay said.
“True. So I was in the dog food aisle deciding what size bag to get. I heard high heels clicking on the tile floor but I didn’t pay attention until something hard poked into my ribs. She moved in close beside me and said that she would shoot me if I didn’t come along quietly. She took my arm to guide me out of the store and to her car, and I could feel the gun in my ribs the whole time.”
“Thank heavens she didn’t trip in those high heels and shoot you accidentally,” I said. One of the voices in my head said that’s exactly what I would have done in her place.
“When we got to the car, she told me to open the door and slide over behind the wheel. Then she handed me a key and told me to drive. We headed to the highway. I tried to drive slowly because I thought I saw you following, Louisa.”
I nodded. “I was, but I got stopped by the police for speeding.”
“Where did she take you?” Kay asked.
“We were only on the freeway a couple of miles,” he said. “She told me to exit at West Elm and we drove to one of the motels at that interchange. She must have checked in earlier. She had a room in the back. We parked in front of it and she slid out of the car first and told me to follow her. And she had a bag from that hardware store next to the grocery. She told me to bring it. It turned out to have a rope in it.”