At the bookstore this past weekend I bought a book of writing prompts to keep me writing while I'm between books. Here's one I whipped up tonight to the prompt: "Write a story that starts with a ransom note."
Who Is At the Yellow Tomb?
Carol
has been taken.
Her
home was broken into
And
she is being held for
Ransom.
Leave
One
hundred
Thousand
dollars at
The
Yellow Tomb at midnight tomorrow in
Englewood Park. Come alone.
Englewood Park. Come alone.
Do
not call the police or
I
will be forced to take actions I
Do
not wish to take.
If
you do not do this
Then
I will kill Carol.
The
note was one of those pasted together jobs with magazine headlines clipped out
letter by letter and attached to a piece of notebook paper. I held the paper in
my trembling hand and read it again.
“What is it?” Sarah asked.
I handed the paper to her. I knew
my face was ashen and my hand was shaking. She read it to herself and covered
her mouth in horror.
“Carol?” Sarah said. “She’s in her
room. Carol! Carol!” She called to our daughter, her hand on the bannister, the
red of her nails contrasting sharply against the mahogany railing.
Of course she didn’t come.
“Who could have done this? Who
could have taken her?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I rubbed a
hand through my beard. My hand would not stop shaking.
“I have to see,” Sarah said,
climbing the stairs.
“See?”
“Her room. Maybe…maybe she’s just
upstairs asleep and it’s all a joke.”
“Sick joke,” I muttered, but I
followed behind her half-hoping it was true. I knew when we reached the door it
wouldn’t be. Carol was seven years old. She loved the blue dress her mother had
bought for her last year, and she had worn it every day for the past two weeks.
The dress lay on the bed, clean
from the last time Sarah had had it washed. Charlotte, our maid, was dusting the
shelves. “Hello, sir. Ma’am. Where’s Carol today?”
Sarah handed the note to Charlotte,
shaking her head, unable to speak. Charlotte threw her hand to her mouth in the
exact way Sarah had. “Oh no! Who could have done this?”
“We don’t know.”
“What are you going to do?” she
asked, her dusting duties forgotten for the moment.
“Pay, I guess. What else can we do?”
I felt like such a wimp. But it was Carol.
Charlotte nodded sadly. “Have you
told the rest of the staff?”
Sarah shook her head. “No, not yet.
Could you?”
We had seven people on staff. It
was something of a shock that the kidnapper had asked for only a hundred
thousand dollars. That was a drop in the bucket. I would have paid millions and
been hardly the worse for it.
Charlotte nodded. “Of course, ma’am.”
She curtsied and hurried out of the room.
Sarah sat on Carol’s bed and buried
her face in her hands. I put a hand on her back between her shoulder blades. “We’ll
get her back, Sarah.”
“You don’t know that.”
“We’ll get her back.”
#
We sat
in the car, Sarah beside me. “I’ll give the kidnapper the money and Carol will
be returned to us. It will be okay,” I said.
“You
don’t know,” she answered.
“No, I
don’t.”
“We’re
going to make him pay,” Sarah said.
“Make
who pay?”
“The
kidnapper, of course.”
“How?”
“I don’t
know. We will. That’s all.”
#
Eleven
fifty, Englewood Park.
The
Yellow Tomb was not a grave as the name indicated, but a statue representing
some general or other from the Civil War. I stood with a bag in my hand,
scared, praying that Carol would be returned to me. Sarah waited in the car,
watching me, I’m sure nervous as hell.
The
park was empty. I had followed the kidnappers instructors. I didn’t want to
risk Carol’s life, and I was already terrified.
In the
distance, I saw two figures approaching. One wore a cloak with a raised hood.
Whoever it was looked small. It was a woman. The other was my little girl.
They
approached me. The figure in the cloak held Carol’s hand. I could see a white
mask on the woman in the cloak.
“Are
you all right?” I asked her.
“Yes,
Daddy.”
“Good.”
I turned to face the figure. “Here’s the money,” I said.
A hand
reached out and took the bag. The figure didn’t say a word. She opened the bag
singlehandedly and looked down. She nodded, and let go of Carol’s hand.
My
little girl ran into my open arms. Before I could even look up to attempt to
see who had taken Carol, the woman had vanished.
#
The
next day, as we sat and ate breakfast, Sarah rang a bell to call for Charlotte.
No one
answered.
She
rang again. Jim, our butler, came into the kitchen. “Sir, madam.”
“Where
is Charlotte?” Sarah asked.
“I do
not know, ma’am. I will check her quarters to see if she is there.”
She did
have a tendency to oversleep.
A few
moments later, Jim returned to the kitchen with a note. “This was on her bed,
sir.”
I took
the note, read it, and nearly fell out of my chair. "I know who did it."
“Shawn, what is it?” Sarah
asked.
I
handed the note to Sarah. As she read out loud, I went to the stationary drawer
and removed the kidnapper’s letter. “Sir,
Madam. I have enough to send my daughter to Downside Academy. I quit. Charlotte. Shawn,
I don’t understand. What does it mean?”
I gave
Sarah the kidnapper’s ransom note. “It's so obvious, Sarah. Downside Academy. It was right there
in front of us the whole time. It was
right there.”
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