Chapter Fourteen – Di's Dilemma, Kendall's Screams, Lily's Idea, Ryan's Visit to Zach in Jail, and Tad's Next
Previously: Following Zach's arrest, JR, Babe, Adam, Krystal, Amanda, Ryan and NuGreenlee have left the Zendall office, leaving Kendall with Jonathan and Lily. Lily keeps going over the Script, hoping to find the mystery's solution. Kendall staunchly believes Zach has been railroaded, despite Ryan's attempts to convince her the right maniac was arrested. Di is still keeping THE SECRET from Tad, although she'safraid Dixie is somehow involved in the disappearances.
From the moment she heard the song on Tad's cell phone Di was stuck firmly on the horns of a dilemma. She was terrified that Dixie was involved somehow with the disappearances. What else could that song mean? Was "You Are My Sunshine" code for "Dixie Dun It"? Or was whoever responsible for the whole nightmare holding Dixie as well? Was that song a specific message meant for Di alone, since Di was the only person in Pine Valley who knew Dixie was alive? She longed to ask Tad what he thought. But asking Tad meant telling Tad. And telling Tad meant losing Tad.
"Penny for your thoughts," he was saying to her now, as they drove back to Wildwind, where Julia was letting her stay. Julia had disappeared along with everybody else who had disappeared. She didn't need to go to Wildwind to learn that; she had read it with Tad on Myrtle's kitchen wall. How could Dixie be involved in all this? How?
"Dixie's on my mind," Di said carefully.
Tad sighed. "Yeah, mine too. Damn song brought her right back to me. Why do you suppose Zach used it? He didn't even know Dixie."
"You think it was Zach?" Di asked, surprised.
"Seems a likely candidate," Tad said. "The Script pins it on him. Who else could it be?"
"Dixie," Di said to herself. "That's who else it could be, Tad."
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Kendall was doing her best to stay calm. Freaking out wouldn't help Zach, she reasoned. Not that anything she was doing had the remotest chance of helping him anyway. The only way she could help Zach would be to find out who had made half the town go missing and then to find them. Or to find them first and then find out who had taken them. And why.
"So what am I doing to solve the case?" she asked herself. "I'm sitting in my office with Lily and Ryan's brother, who tried to kill all of us a few months ago, while they read a Script that says over and over again that Zach is guilty as sin. The love of my life is sitting in a jail cell while I watch Lily and Jonathan reading. What's wrong with this picture?"
"So far there's nothing that implicates Zach except this Script" Lily was summarizing. "Jonathan, we need to go over this again."
"How many times are you going to go over it?" Kendall had to ask. "You must have the damn thing memorized by now."
"We need to keep rereading it until we find the answer," Lily answered at once.
"What if there is no answer?" Jonathan asked. "I mean, what if we can't find the answer we want? What if we can't find out that Zach didn't do it?"
"Zach DIDN'T do it!" Kendall exploded, forgetting how yelling affected Lily. "Oh, Lily, forgive me!" she begged her, when she saw the terrified young woman's hands fly up to her ears and the look of pain spread across her face. "I didn't mean to scream. Out loud."
Lily forced herself to stop shaking. She looked at Jonathan, and that grounded her, as it always did. "So from now on you're going to try to do all your screaming inside?" she asked Kendall, slowly taking her hands away from her ears.
"Yes," Kendall promised her. "I'm screaming inside right now."
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"Do I get to make a phone call?" Zach was asking Derek. "Do I get to have a lawyer? Anybody here ever heard of the Constitution of the United States of America?"
"You have a visitor," Derek replied brusquely, avoiding every question.
"Hiya, Zach!" Ryan greeted him. "How's life treating you?"
Zach felt like he'd been kicked in the gut. He clutched the bars of his cell so hard his knuckles went white. "Lavery, you're supposed to be with Kendall. You're supposed to be protecting her!"
Ryan chuckled. "Protecting Kendall from who? The only threat to her is standing right in front of me in a jail cell."
"Derek, call Livia for me!" Zach yelled out. "I need to get out of here! Now!"
"I'd love to call Livia," Derek said, not bothering to keep the icy hatred out of his voice. "I only wish I knew where she was. Where is she, Slater?"
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Scene: Jonathan and Lily's tree house. They are still discussing the disappearances which have filled Pine Valley with horror and foreboding.
Lily: Maybe we should go check out Zach's Casino for ourselves. He's the logical suspect after all.
Jonathan: Lily, do you ever think about kissing me? I think about kissing you all the time.
Lily: I don't think about any one thing all the time, Jonathan. That isn't how my mind works.
Jonathan: I love the way your mind works, Lily.
"Kendall, can you wait until I'm through reading?" Lily asked her politely. "People looking over my shoulder make me extremely nervous."
"You two have a tree house?" Kendall asked pointblank. "Or is that another lie in the Script? Right along with the Vanished being held captive in the Casino basement and Zach being the manic who's behind all of this?"
"Lily, please turn to the part where we figure out where Zach is holding the victims," Jonathan requested. "I want to read something again."
"Oh, brother!" Kendall muttered, thoroughly exasperated.
"Here it is," Lily said, showing the Script to Jonathan.
Lily: Where do you suppose Zach could be keeping all those people? Casinos don't have attics.
Jonathan: But they have basements. Come on, Lily!
Lily: Shouldn't we call Dereck?
Jonathan: No time for that! There's no telling what that maniac is going to do to all those people he's kidnapped!
Jonathan closed the Script with a sigh. "And then we go to Zach's Casino and find all the missing people in the basement. Only Tad said the basement is empty."
"Yes!" Kendall readily agreed. "Which proves the whole Script is nothing but a work of fiction. Rotten fiction."
"Unless there's another basement," Lily said.
Jonathan and Kendall exchanged glances.
"Another basement?" Kendall whispered.
"Yes, a second basement where the victims could be held." Lily thought that through. "It's only an idea. Do you suppose Zach kept a floor plan of the Casino?"
"Lily, you guys have already ransacked this office looking for evidence," Kendall said, trying to ignore a gnawing feeling that was currently lodged in the pit of her stomach. "Nobody found the Casino's floor plan."
"That's true," Lily agreed. "Could there be anything we missed? Is there a safe somewhere?"
Kendall flinched. "On that wall, behind that portrait of the Kane Women."
Lily smiled, admiring the likenesses of Erica, Kendall, Bianca and Miranda. "Can I be in the next portrait? Now that my Dad is married to Erica, I'm technically a Kane Woman!"
"Sure," Kendall said, her mind and heart racing. "You'll be in the very next portrait, Lily. Word of honor."
Briefly, she considered telling them it was all a waste of time to look inside the safe. Why would Zach have put the Casino's floor plan in the wall safe? But if it were there, maybe it could help him somehow. Or sink him. Either way, Kendall needed to know the truth. Resolutely, she moved the portrait, revealing the wall safe.
"Do you know the combination?" Jonathan asked her.
Mutely, Kendall nodded. She opened the safe quickly and stepped away from it, allowing Lily to have a look inside.
"I found the Casino's floor plan!" Lily sang out.
"And look, there's the second basement!" Jonathan sang out.
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Dereck had been called away on police business and reluctantly left Zach and Ryan alone to face each other through the steel bars of Zach's cell.
"Ryan, let's make a deal," Zach proposed, wracking his brain to come up with a way to convince Ryan Lavery that Kendall was in real danger. He didn't figure his chances of doing so were all that good, since at that moment, Ryan Lavery was looking as if he'd picked the Derby winner or won the Nobel Prize or both.
"I don't think you're in any position to make a deal, Slater. You're incarcerated. That means you're in jail."
Zach smiled, careful not to make his smile look like a smirk. "Ryan, we are different men, you and I," he began carefully.
"I'll say. For one thing I'm not under arrest."
Ryan knew he was having too much fun. But he had wanted to bring Slater down for such a long time, he couldn't resist.
"True," Zach conceded. "And for another thing we both care about Kendall."
"I care about Kendall," Ryan corrected him. "I don't know if you're capable of caring about anything or anybody."
By an enormous act of will, Zach did not let his anger show.
"Lavery, Kendall is in danger. You're in danger too, but you're not so important to me. Kendall is important to me. Is she important to you?"
But Ryan refused to see things the way Zach saw them.
"Gee, Zach. I didn't know I wasn't important to you! What a revelation! I'm devastated!"
Zach reached through the bars, grabbed Ryan by the collar with both hands and pulled hard.
"Go find Kendall and make sure nothing happens to her!" he ordered Ryan when their faces were only inches apart, his words coming out slowly, meaningfully and menacingly "If you won't do that, if you can't do that, then get me the hell out of this cell and I'll do it myself!"
"You're not going anywhere, Slater," Dereck informed him, walking in. "Let go of Lavery. Now."
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"Thanks for driving me home," Di thanked Tad.
"Anytime," he replied, wanting to stop wanting to kiss her.
"I'll see you tomorrow," she said to him. "Maybe by then Zach will have led the police to everybody who's missing." She didn't sound like she believed that would happen. "Tad, there is one thing you should know."
"You want a raise already?" he joked.
What she wanted was to tell him that his Dixie was alive and might be involved in the disappearances.
"I want you to know how grateful I am that you hired me," she said instead.
"I do know. That's why I hired you. So you'd be grateful to me forever. See you tomorrow, Watson. Don't be late or I'll dock your pay. Don't think I won't."
"Are you sure you don't want to stay here with me?" Di offered. "Your name is on that wall, don't forget."
"Jamie's waiting for me at home," he explained. "He's bigger than you so he'll probably be able to protect me from the bogeyman better than you could. Maybe."
Di laughed and went into Wildwind as Tad sauntered back toward his car.
"Tad!" a familiar voice called out to him.
That was the last thing he heard for a long time.
Are the Vanished being held in the Casino's Second Basement? If so, does Zach know? Does that mean Zach is behind the disappearances? Or is Dixie behind it all? Or is it somebody else? Can Zach convince Derek and Ryan to help him protect Kendall before she is vanished? Does he know who he's protecting her from? Could Jily be cuter? Frustrated? Confused? Just you wait until the next thrilling episode which will leave you even more frustrated and confused! To get back at me, please send me a Review:)