Night of the Living Deb Read online

  I said, “I’ll feel better when Brian’s back.” And not a minute sooner.

  “Let’s talk about the news bite, shall we?” Allie was ever so adept at changing the subject. “Did you hear why the cops want to interview our boy Brian?”

  “He’s wanted for questioning.” My voice sounded so croaky. “Something to do with a murder,” I said, gnawing on my lip. “That looked like his car, didn’t it, with all the yellow tape around it? Was something in the trunk?”

  “Something?” she repeated snidely. “Oh, it was something,

  all right.”

  I figured whatever the cops wanted from Malone had to do with a murder trial he was involved with at ARGH.

  Nothing else seemed logical.

  “Have the police talked to you?” I asked. “Does it have to do with some criminal case you guys are working on?”

  “Police? Criminal case?” my mother echoed, standing at my elbow. I’d almost forgotten she was there. “What’s goin’ on, Andrea? Are you in trouble again?”

  “No, Ms. Scatterbrain, it hasn’t got a thing to do with what we’re working on,” Allie said in that patronizing tone she did so well. “Hello? Pollyanna! Don’t you get it?

  Weren’t you listening? Didn’t you hear why the cops put out a BOLO on him?”

  “Because of a murder,” I said, not for the first time, “but I don’t know whose. One of your clients?”

  “What murder? Darling, please, what have I walked into here?” Cissy had removed her cape and gloves and was folding them over the sofa arm, inching near enough to give me a polite jab in the ribs. “Did you kill someone and not tell me about it?”

  “No, Mother, I didn’t kill anyone. Not yet.” I waved her off, though she didn’t go far, just across the living room to inspect my work-in-progress. I saw her cock her head, then scratch it, evidently bamboozled by my artistic genius, and I figured that should occupy her for at least a few minutes.

  Back to the business at hand.

  “It wasn’t a client.” Allie lowered her voice. “Though the victim’s name should ring a bell.”

  “Who?” Why did I suddenly wish I’d fortified myself this morning? Like pouring vodka on my Captain Crunch, or spreading Valium on toast?

  “Brace yourself,” Allie warned. “I’ll give you the skinny, but I guarantee it’s not going to make you any happier than it did Abramawitz.”

  So much for the Surgeon General’s warning, I thought, and girded myself.

  “Here goes,” she said before she started to spill, like the kid who took his finger out of the hole in the dike. The dam overfloweth.

  I concentrated on Allie’s voice, blinking as I took in the tale she told, and, Lord, but it was a whopper.

  Brian’s red Acura had turned up early that morning in a no-parking zone at Love Field. Since Security these days doesn’t mess around with unattended vehicles in places where they’re not supposed to be, a tow was immediately summoned, and while the car was being hooked up, the trunk sprung. Lo and behold, wrapped up in a plastic tarp tucked over the spare tire was not Malone’s prized Calloway

  clubs, but the lifeless body of a young woman.

  “A naked young woman,” Allie clarified, in case all she’d told me thus far wasn’t enough to give me a stroke.

  “Naked,” I murmured, unable to utter a coherent statement while my brain processed the rest.

  It had to be a prank, something faked, and I remarked as much, though Allie’s “very naked and very dead” assured me it was real enough.

  And she wasn’t done.

  “My source at the DPD says the DB is a twenty-twoyear-old exotic dancer well known to the flatfoots downtown.

  She’s been arrested for solicitation a time or two, though she’s always made bail,” the Blond Menace informed me in her know-it-all tone. “Robby—I mean, my source—wouldn’t give me her real name, but he did let it slip that she uses the nom de plume of ‘Trayla Trash’ when she dances. Sound familiar?”

  Goose bumps rose, rashlike, over my skin.

  “How?” I said.

  “I was told that her head was bashed in with a golf club.”

  “Not a Big Bertha?”

  “I don’t know, Kendricks,” Allie snapped. “Putter, driver, does it matter?”

  If her head was smashed with Calloway clubs belonging to Brian Malone, well, yes, it did. But I didn’t want to go there.

  I swallowed hard, but the lump in my throat was too big to go down. Instead, I felt like I was choking as I repeated for good measure, “Trayla Trash is really dead?”

  “You can rest assured she’s not in Vegas with Malone.”

  Call me a cold fish, but somehow the idea comforted me, though I was truly sorry she was dead. Dancing half naked for men and ending up stuffed in a trunk: hardly a fairy tale kind of life.

  “So Trayla Trash isn’t with Brian,” I said, more to reassure myself than anything.

  “No, princess, she’s not hanging with anyone but the Big Guy Upstairs. Or maybe the Dude Down Below.”

  “Andrea? What trailer trash are you muttering about and why would you think she was with Mr. Malone?” My mother appeared at my side, and I raised a hand in the universal “hush” sign.

  Though she clearly looked annoyed, she obeyed.

  And I sorted out the million questions in my head, asking the first one that made the jump to my lips: “Are they sure it’s really her?”

  “They’ve taken her to the morgue for a positive ID, of course, but all signs point to her. They’ve got her prints on file, according to Rob—um, my contact—and he sounds sure enough. So, yeah, Kendricks, I think the poor girl’s done her last lap dance,” Allie said, though she wasn’t joking

  around.

  Neither was I.

  “I can’t believe this. None of it makes any sense.” I felt too loopy to stand, and dropped onto the sofa, at which point Mother settled down beside me and put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s too weird to be real. Like a Quentin Tarantino movie.”

  “Except Brian’s gonna wish it was only Uma Thurman kicking his ass when he finally surfaces. This is just crazy, way beyond the time when he took me to Disney World because he wanted a tour of those freaky underground tunnels where they haul the trash so no one in the park ever sees a garbage truck,” Allie said and sighed.

  Malone took her to a strip club and to Disney World?

  The things I’d missed.

  “You might be right, Kendricks,” the Size Two Terror admitted, and my neck hairs prickled at the realization she was hitching a ride on my bandwagon. “This is so not like Brian that I’m seriously starting to wonder if it’s some kind of setup. That phone call from him. Are you sure he told you he wanted to split? Is that all he got across?

  He wasn’t trying to send you an SOS? A secret message, like in code or something? Anything strike you as weird?”

  A secret message in code? What did she think we did, communicated with smoke signals? Or pig Latin?

  All I could tell her for certain was, “Everything about the call was weird. He was stammering”—I squinted, thinking back—“and, even though we had a horrible connection, he sounded scared, like he wanted to cry.”

  “C’mon, we both know Malone doesn’t get weepy,”

  Allie remarked, and I despised her all over again, for thinking she knew him better—which was very possibly true—and for believing even for a second that he could do any of the things he was accused of doing. “Think hard, Kendricks,” Allie prodded again, “did he say anything that didn’t make sense?”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  I’d been with Brian for four months, and he was a lawyer.

  He’d said lots of things that never made sense, mostly work-related terms like “ipso facto,” the “veracity prong,”

  and the “Peyton exception,” which is usually when my mind started to wander and I’d pretend to listen, nodding a lot for good measur
e.

  “Think about it, Kendricks,” she prompted, sounding edgy. “Nothing he said seemed the least bit off to you?

  More so than usual, I mean.”

  Wait a minute.

  It was then that I recalled my dream, about the House of Mirrors and seeing Brian and a caped witch offering cabbage soup.

  “My mother’s homemade cabbage soup,” I said, louder than necessary, which earned me an odd glance from Cissy, who started to open her mouth, then promptly shut it again. Probably afraid I’d duct-tape her lips if she interrupted one more time.

  “Your mom’s soup?” Allie repeated, shifting from edgy to irritated. “Look, Kendricks, I don’t have time to chat about recipes. So give me a call if you come up with something better than that. Otherwise, I’ve gotta go. Old Abe is on a rampage, and I’ve got to see what I can do to buy time for Malone before the board kicks his tail out of the firm if he doesn’t turn up to defend himself and return those docs to the file.”

  “Allie, wait,” I said, but she was already gone.

  Still, she’d got me to thinking, and I didn’t much like any of the theories I was coming up with.

  I set the receiver gently back in its cradle and turned around to face my mother, who sat patiently with hands folded in her lap, waiting for me to give the okay for her to resume vocalization.

  “Something’s freaky,” I said, making the abrupt and nonsensical decision to tell-all, because I needed a sounding board, an impartial ear to assure me I was indeed sane and on the right track.

  “Freaky can be relative,” my mother stated, nodding.

  “Do go on.” She tilted her head, as she’d done while studying my painting. I’m sure she’d found its abstract streaks far more understandable than me, her own flesh and blood.

  “No one’s seen Brian since Saturday night when he purportedly left The Men’s Club in the company of an, um, exotic dancer.” I managed to say it all in one breath, without blushing or collapsing into an embarrassed heap.

  “I see.” She didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink.

  I swallowed a little extra air as backup and pushed onward.

  “His car turned up early this morning in a no parking zone at the airport with a dead woman in the trunk.” I wet my lips. “The exotic dancer in question, or so it appears.”

  “You’re imagining something has happened to him, aren’t you?” she asked, her eyes pinning down mine with stealth-bomb accuracy.

  I felt that horrible surge that comes before I start to cry, but I didn’t aim to break down in front of my mother.

  Crying could wait. Finding Brian couldn’t. And, perhaps, there was some way she could help me out. Being the Queen Mum of Dallas Society had its privileges, and she was a champion string-puller.

  I gulped down any pride I had left, deciding to come clean with her, no matter what it cost, mostly in terms of my judgment (or lack of it) and Malone’s reputation.

  “I’m frantic,” I admitted in a whisper. “And I don’t know what to do.”

  “So it seems Mr. Malone has got himself into quite the conundrum.” Though her eyes narrowed the tiniest bit, my mother’s expression changed not a fig.

  “A huge honking conundrum,” I said, unable to disagree.

  “How did this come about?” she inquired. “Did he lose his mind? Was he possessed? Did he suffer amnesia?”

  “I have no idea,” I said, thinking, Take your pick.

  “What does Ms. Price know about all this?”

  “The same as I do. That the police want to find Brian and question him about the dead girl in his trunk, but no one seems to know where he is, and I’m more confused than ever since he called me last night and told me he wanted space and to apologize to you for missing the party because he loves your cabbage soup.” I dropped my head in my hands and moaned loudly, which felt pretty damned good and necessary. “I don’t know what’s going on. It’s insane . . . it’s beyond reason . . . it’s . . .”

  “Utterly preposterous,” Cissy finished for me, and I raised my suddenly tear-filled eyes to meet hers. It was I who blinked first.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said”—she spoke slowly, which made for easy lipreading—“

  it’s not possible that Mr. Malone would tell you such nonsense.”

  Was she high on Joy perfume?

  I didn’t get it.

  My mother had been on Brian’s case for months about not putting a ring on my finger even though he stayed over at my condo—which she learned about from Penny George, my neighborhood snitch—and suddenly she was at his defense?

  I swallowed, processing this bizarre turn of events, afraid to say too much or I’d spoil the moment. Still, I couldn’t help myself.

  “Okay, what’s going on? You’ve hardly been Malone’s biggest cheerleader, yet you believe that he couldn’t have done those things? You agree with me that something’s wrong, and he’s found himself in some kind of sticky situation he can’t extricate himself from?”

  She sighed. “Whatever I think of Mr. Malone’s etiquette in wooing you, I don’t for a minute believe he’s a bad man. In fact, just the opposite, or I wouldn’t allow your relationship to continue.”

  Wouldn’t allow? Who was she kidding? Like she had control of my life any more these days than she had when I’d refused to debut.

  “Besides, it’s highly unlikely that Mr. Malone would tell you he loves my cabbage soup. If he did, he was pulling your leg.”

  “Pulling my leg?” As in joking? Brian sounded anything but comical when he’d called the night before. He’d sounded dead earnest.

  “Yes, teasing you, Andrea. Messing with your head.

  Playing mind games.” She crossed her arms and leaned back against the sofa, wearing a smug expression that said, Oh, boy, do I know something you don’t know.

  My last nerve twanged like the guitar strings in a country western song. “Whatever you have to say, cough it up.” Or I’d be tempted to take hold of her pearls and twist until I forced it out of her. I was sadly lacking in patience at the moment. “Before Christmas, if you wouldn’t mind,” I prodded her.

  Mother performed her usual delay tactics, plucking nonexistent lint off her tweed jacket, giving a little flip to her bobbed blond hair, finally coming out with, “My darling child, your Mr. Malone and I have had occasion to chat about many things outside your earshot, some of which concern you and others that have nothing whatsoever to do with you.” As I opened my mouth to ask what, she raised her hand to hush me up, just as I’d done with her. “On one such occasion, we discussed allergies. He’s

  allergic to bees, did you realize? Said he swells up like a basketball, apparently. If he doesn’t get to an E.R. so they can treat him with those anaphylactic pens, he’s a goner.”

  Bees?

  My response was to stare at her, agog, because I hadn’t known, though I wouldn’t have admitted that to her if my life depended on it.

  “What brought this up?” I managed to croak, once I’d gotten over my initial shock at the idea of Malone sharing secrets with Cissy.

  She smoothed a hand over her skirt. “I shared with Mr. Malone that I once had a Polish nanny who used to make cabbage soup, which she forced upon me as a child.” Her heart-shaped face puckered. “That horrid stuff nearly killed me. I had the most severe case of hives. I missed Kitty Barstow’s fourth birthday party, and I was devastated.”

  Good Lord, were those tears in her eyes?

  “So I would never even joke about making cabbage soup.” She shuddered. “Even the thought of it makes me queasy.”

  “You’re allergic to cabbage?” I’d never heard of such a thing. Was there such a thing?

  She nodded. “And Mr. Malone knew it, so if he told you he looked forward to eating my cabbage soup, he must’ve been delirious, or it may have been intentional.”

  Like he was trying to tell me something?

  Just as Allie had suggested.
r />   The wheels in my head started spinning so fast I could hear the grinding, and it wasn’t an unpleasant sound, not when I realized what this meant.

  Malone needed me.

  He’d hoped I’d be smart enough to figure things out, and I had. Well, a little anyway; enough to be sure he was in a very bad spot.

  And help him, I would.

  “Let’s go, Mother,” I said, and got up from the sofa to hunt down my purse.

  “But I only just arrived, and we haven’t even talked about the menu for the dinner, and it’s on Wednesday—”

  “That’s too bad,” I cut her off, having located bag and keys. I even fetched her cloak off the back of the couch and handed it to her. “Because I’ve got somewhere to go, and I want you to come with me.”

  “Why?”

  “I need a wing man.”

  “A wing man?” I could see the alarm in her face, surely flashing back to the last time this situation had arisen; only it had been Mother asking the very same question of me. “What on earth for?”

  “Breaking and entering,” I told her honestly as I hustled her toward the door, giving her pause to grab her umbrella before we headed out into the storm, both on the literal and figurative front.

  Our destination: Brian Malone’s. My mission: to pry where no girlfriend had pried before.

  I wanted answers, and I aimed to find them, whatever it took.

  Chapter 12

  I hadn’t been over to Malone’s apartment much, maybe twice in the four months we’d

  been going out.

  Mostly, he came over to my place, probably because I was usually there. When you worked from home, it meant you were often, well, home.

  It wasn’t that he lived far away, as it was a pretty straight shot over to his building. He lived in Addison, a next door neighbor to my North Dallas suburb, so we were kissing cousins, location-wise.

  The main reason why we didn’t spend time at Malone’s had to do with something more, er, olfactory.

  I had a pretty good recollection of precisely what it was after I’d located the key in the hiding spot Allie had spilled the beans about (yep, there it was, wedged in a missing chunk of wood in the frame overhead), unlocked the door, stepped over the rolled-up newspaper on the doormat, and entered.