Night of the Living Deb Page 11

  My nose wrinkled as it hit me.

  Eau de Sock.

  That was it.

  The stench.

  No matter how clean the place was—and it was meticulous—the air held an odor of sweaty athletic sock.

  Don’t ask why. Malone didn’t smell like that, and I know he did his laundry regularly. Brian had suggested the last tenant wore the same pair of socks every day without washing them, until the stink had killed him. My guess was some kind of mold, growing somewhere behind the walls or in the vents, unseen and deadly.

  Yeah, I watched the ten o’clock news and saw the stories about mold driving people out of their million dollar mansions, giving kids asthma, knocking the elderly unconscious, even making Fido’s fur fall out.

  The government was so worried about terrorists and nuclear weapons they didn’t realize we could all be picked off slowly but surely by the fungus among us (try saying that three times fast without tongue-tripping).

  “So this is where he lives when he’s not at your house?”

  Mother tiptoed in behind me as I shut the door and hit the light switch.

  We’d both trailed in a good bit of the outdoors, despite wiping our shoes on the welcome mat. The rain dripped off my slicker and Mother’s cape like the proverbial water off a duck’s back. If any of the gang from CSI dropped by to collect trace evidence, the muddy imprints of my sneakers and Cissy’s chi-chi boots would blatantly link us to the scene of the slime.

  “Honestly, darling, I had hoped for so much more. Mr. Malone could use a good interior designer.” She sighed and gestured around us. “What do you call this style?”

  “ ‘Penitentiary Spare,’ ” I managed to joke, even though my humor seemed to fall flat of late, as there was little to joke about.

  “And what on earth is that odor?” she said, loudly sniffing, the first thing I’d thought when I’d ventured into Malone’s apartment initially, though I’d been well-bred enough to keep it to myself.

  Cissy had no such compunction, since Malone wasn’t even around, and I was her daughter, which meant rules about manners didn’t always apply.

  “I don’t know,” I told her. “Brian thinks someone died here without ever washing his socks. I figure toxic mold lives in the walls.”

  “Good Lord, I understand now why he spends so much time at your place. Not that I approve of cohabitation, even for health purposes,” she explained, if that constituted an explanation. “Besides”—she glanced around her, looking down her nose at the sparsely furnished bachelor pad, mostly done in early IKEA—“your decor is so much cozier.”

  Cozier.

  As in, less than a thousand square feet, jam-packed with the things I loved, collected through the years, some inherited (like the hope chest that served as my coffee table and the Eastlake bed I slept in); others I’d picked up at rummage or estate sales, consignment stores, or antique malls, whenever something struck my fancy. I was good at refinishing, too, when I felt like inhaling fumes from paint

  stripper.

  Argh.

  There was that word again.

  Stripper.

  Though it was worse, wasn’t it, when preceded by “dead” as opposed to “paint”?

  Which reminded me why I was there.

  I had to find something that shed light on where Brian was and what trouble he’d gotten himself into. He was so organized, so on top of things; it was hard to believe he’d vanished without leaving a clue of some sort. If only I could get my hands on his day planner, I’d have it figured out in a jiff. But if it were in his briefcase, which he normally locked in his trunk, I was screwed.

  So I started with the obvious.

  He kept a calendar on his refrigerator, and I headed there first, sure that if he’d intended to skip town with Trayla Trash he would’ve jotted down a note in the appropriate square. Brian planned for everything. That boy left little to chance.

  I could think of a million such examples.

  He had extra batteries for his flashlights and checked them regularly; ditto his smoke alarm and carbon monoxide detector.

  He had a AAA-approved emergency kit in his trunk (which obviously had not helped Trayla), and he carried granola bars in his briefcase so he’d have something to eat if he found himself stuck in a disabled car or elevator.

  He kept packets of Shout Wipes in his desk drawer at work in case he spilled his lunch on his tie.

  When he first spent the night at my condo, he’d come armed with a brand-new toothbrush.

  I could go on and on, but I won’t because I had a job to do, and I didn’t want to hang around long enough to get into a sticky wicket.

  With eagle-eyed intensity, I studied the month of October, seeing a notation for a dental appointment, the occasional Monday night poker game, a Bar Association dinner, and my birthday—the date of Cissy’s dinner party—circled with a heavy hand in red pen.

  It was enough to make my heart leap.

  He also had the weekend blocked off with “Andy’s Surprise!”

  stretched from Saturday through Tuesday.

  What had he planned? I wondered.

  A trip somewhere outside the city limits? To a quaint B&B? A hotel room here in town, where we could pretend we were alone and miles away from every stressful thing?

  Though I’d never know, would I, unless I located a phone number with a reservation code or a pair of plane tickets? If they existed, he’d doubtless stashed them in his day planner or in the pocket of his briefcase.

  I wondered if the cops had found his attaché in his trunk, along with his potentially murderous Calloway clubs and the alleged dead stripper?

  Oy.

  “What should I be looking for, sweetheart?” my mother asked, and I jumped, as she was standing right behind me, glancing over my shoulder. “Should I be going through his sock drawer?”

  His sock drawer?

  “Mother, no, for Pete’s sake.”

  The last thing I needed was Cissy rifling through Malone’s underwear. God only knew what she might find.

  “Well, I haven’t a clue what’s expected of me. Whyever did you drag me here, darlin’?”

  Okay, so I hadn’t made her part in this scenario very clear.

  I turned squarely to face her. In her dark cape and boots, she resembled a London bobby. All she needed was a baton to whack the bad guys. Though she did have that wicked umbrella.

  “You’re the lookout,” I told her as her brow settled into vague lines of puzzlement. “You need to keep watch for anyone who might surprise me while I’m poking around.”

  Namely, reporters or the police.

  I had been pretty surprised not to see a squad car or a camera crew from one of the local stations positioned in the parking lot when we’d arrived, as I figured they’d be staking out the apartment, waiting for Brian “Most

  Wanted” Malone’s return.

  But Mother and I had encountered no one on the way into the building. The cops were likely still focused on Brian’s car and the body, which inspired hope that our luck would hold for a few minutes more.

  “So you want me to stand in the hallway?” she asked, swinging said umbrella in the direction of the door. “What am I supposed to do? Whistle? Intercept and distract until you’re done in here?”

  Did she think this was Mission: Impossible? Did she expect an instructional tape that would self-destruct?

  Yeesh.

  I took her arm and guided her toward the door, telling her, “Just sit out there, um, reading the paper.”

  I saw the huge Sunday edition of the New York Times lying like a log on the kitchen table, where Allie had apparently deposited it after coming over and letting herself in yesterday.

  The latest Dallas Morning News had replaced it on the doormat, and I plucked that from the floor as I nudged Mother into the apartment’s corridor.

  “Use this.” I pushed it into her hands. There was a chair set near a plant a
yard or so away, between Brian’s apartment and his nearest neighbor. “Take a seat and act casual.

  If you see anyone approaching Brian’s door, um”—I was going to say Call my cell, but Cissy hated using hers and rarely carried it anywhere—“how about you scream or something.”

  “Scream what?”

  “I don’t know. Does it have to be something in particular?

  Can’t you just holler like Fay Wray in King Kong?”

  Mother did her best “miffed” expression, and it was a doozy. “Ladies of my age do not holler, Andrea. I don’t expect to be palmed by an oversized ape, nor am I a barefoot illiterate in overalls minding my sill in the wilds of Appalachia.”

  So I guess I couldn’t ask her to squeal like a pig, huh?

  “Just make like you’ve seen a mouse, okay?” I suggested, assuming she could handle that bit of stage direction.

  I’d watched her freak out at the sight of a tree roach nearly the size of a mouse, and she’d managed a pretty good Janet “I’m Getting Stabbed in the Shower” Leigh impression.

  “A mouse?” She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”

  What the heck did she want? A Hollywood screenplay and Spielberg calling “Action”?

  Perhaps she’d go for something more John le Carré,

  words a spy might say. “Try, ‘The eagle has landed,’ ” I said.

  She tapped a manicured nail to her chin. “Sweetie, I’m just not feeling it. Besides, it’s already been done to death.”

  Who’d she think she was? Katharine Hepburn?

  I choked back what I really wanted to tell her, offering instead, “How about shouting ‘Fire’? It does wonders for crowded theatres.”

  “Hmm.” She paused. “That’s not bad.” She gave a slow nod. “It’s succinct, yet powerful. Perfect,” Mother said. “I can work with that.”

  “Great.” It took concerted effort not to roll my eyes.

  Cissy gazed off somewhere in the distance, obviously a thoughtful moment to get into the skin of “woman pretending to read paper who shall shriek ‘Fire’ hellaciously should anyone approach forbidden door”—my mother had a bit of the Method actress in her, dating back to her

  college days at SMU.

  She was heading over to the chair by the ficus when I did an about-face and slipped back into Brian’s lair.

  I shut the door behind me, dead-bolted it for good measure, then surveyed the space around me, feeling determined.

  I didn’t like feeling helpless, and the best antidote for that was actually doing something.

  I wasn’t sure what I might find that could give me answers, or if there even were any hidden around his apartment, just waiting for me to stumble upon them. But, having seen the way he’d marked the calendar for my birthday-related events, I felt strongly that Brian was in trouble by chance, not by choice.

  All rightee.

  I rubbed my hands together.

  Time to snoop.

  Although, it’s not like I was snooping the way a nosy girlfriend would.

  Contraire, mon frère.

  This particular invasion of privacy was purely beneficent.

  So it wasn’t the Woodward and Bernstein “we must expose evil” type of investigating, but rather a kinder and gentler “must go that extra mile to get Malone out of deep doo-doo” sort.

  I had myself fully convinced of that by the time I started pulling open desk drawers and shuffling through the contents, finding more signs of Brian’s compulsive organization: neatly stacked boxes of binder clips and rubber bands, extra pens and reams of paper, a paperback dictionary, staplers (did he really need three?), a spare cartridge for his laser printer. But nothing that would explain his disappearance, unless he’d had a savage tiff with one of the sales people at Office Depot.

  Any business-related files he kept at the office—or in his briefcase—so the manila folders arranged alphabetically mostly dealt with his personal life: credit cards, health and car insurance, bank statements, utilities, and other mundane items that concerned activities of daily living.

  I saw no sign of the paperwork relating to the criminal case that Allie had been pissing and moaning about, which meant Brian had taken the documents with him; perhaps the police had turned them up in his car.

  The only thing of consequence I tripped over was his address book.

  I did a fast flip to the M’s and noted his parents’ address and phone number in Chesterfield, Missouri. Had the cops called them already? Told them their son was tangled up in a stripper’s death?

  Yipes.

  I prayed that hadn’t happened. If they should hear about Brian from anyone, it should be me.

  So I pocketed the address book.

  I would call them later. I didn’t have any idea what I’d say, but I’d think of something.

  The desk having yielded next to nothing, I moved into the galley kitchen, checking drawers and cabinets, quickly realizing that he—a single guy—was better stocked than I in so many departments: cutlery, cooking utensils, baking pans, even a collection of olive oils that would’ve made Julia Child drool.

  He had The Joy of Cooking and assorted other cookbooks stashed in a cabinet above his fridge, which made me suspicious. If Malone could cook, he hadn’t spilled those fava beans, not to me. All I did know was that he could make toast or grill a cheese sandwich when the situation called for either; and, at my place, that was about all one could do.

  I seriously pondered if Brian had a talent I hadn’t been privy to, and, if so, I was pea green with envy. I lacked all but the most basic of culinary skills, which explained why the sum total of my cookware consisted of a cookie sheet, should I have a craving for slice ’n’ bake; the single mixing bowl I used to make salad; and a spatula to flip aforementioned cookies. Not exactly the Cordon Bleu.

  Still, if he’d ever said to me, “Come over to my apartment, and I’ll whip up a couple pecan-encrusted chicken breasts with spinach orzo on the side,” I would’ve hightailed it to his place, stinky sock smell or not.

  Had he ever cooked for Allie?

  My neck tensed at the very thought, and I felt a stab of jealousy, as I had when she’d mentioned things they’d done together that had nothing to do with me.

  I didn’t like knowing they’d once shared a lot more than spit, even though I had a past of my own (not that I was ever promiscuous, just to be clear). I’d explained my “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule early in the relationship, to keep us both from bringing up old baggage that might—no, that almost certainly would—hurt the other somehow.

  No one wanted to be reminded of those who’d come before, although one could always hope there weren’t too many; particularly in this day and age.

  But back to Brian’s past loves.

  I was aware that the Blond Menace had been his girlfriend and his colleague, which had given her greater access to his life than I had, something I hadn’t dwelled on much before. Until these last few days when I’d begun to doubt how well I really knew Malone. How much I trusted him.

  How much he trusted me.

  Focus, Andy, I told myself, because I hadn’t come over just to ponder the cracks in our relationship. Brian needed help—I’d convinced myself that’s what the indecipherable cabbage soup comment meant—and I couldn’t let him down.

  I started to the bedroom, stopped and cocked my ear toward the door, thinking I’d heard the sound of voices.

  I waited a minute.

  Wondered if I should check on my mother.

  But all seemed quiet on the ficus front.

  So I ventured into Brian’s sparse sleeping quarters, which consisted of a white IKEA bed, matching white dresser, a beat-up leather club chair, and a closet with shuttered doors. I stood just inside the doorway for a moment, not sure of where to begin since I had no clue what I was searching for.

  I checked the dresser top first, finding little there of interest besides a silver dish filled
with change, a wooden box stuffed with receipts, and several framed photographs.

  One picture was of the two of us at the sculpture park, and another of a salt-and-pepper-haired couple posing with a pair of golden retrievers, who presumably were his parents (the people, not the puppies).

  I picked up the latter and studied it for a moment, staring at the faces, wrinkled up with big grins. I could see a bit of Malone in each of them. He had his mother’s brown hair and bright blue eyes, and his father’s lean build.

  Odd, but he didn’t talk much about them, and I was always whining to him about Cissy. I didn’t know what his folks did for a living, if they were retired; perhaps because I’d never asked. Malone just wasn’t that great at volunteering personal information. If I wanted scoop, I had to pry it from him.

  I made a decision then and there to ask him about his family at my first opportunity, once he’d been found and things had returned to normal.

  Not that I ever strived for normalcy, but it sounded good in this instance, far better than this craziness.

  Where to? I asked myself, wondering if this little jaunt wasn’t a lost cause.

  What could Brian have left behind that would point to where he’d gone? I mean, how could he have anticipated anything that had happened the night of the bachelor party when he somehow got tied up with Trayla Trash?

  Because if he’d had any inkling, surely he would’ve told me, “Andy, it’s going to look like I’ve run off with a stripper, only I haven’t. And when she’s found wrapped in a tarp in the trunk of the Acura, left in a no-parking zone at the airport, the truth won’t be anything like what it seems.”

  So if I could just scratch the surface to find what was beneath.

  Then, voilà!

  Mystery solved. Brian could come home.

  If only it were that simple.

  Doing my best Miss Marple routine, I continued my snoopfest, shoving my hand between bed frame and mattress, where I’d hidden my diary as a kid. I didn’t have to probe much before I ran into the spine of a book.