Night of the Living Deb Read online

  “Whatever we found in Mr. Malone’s car is part of our investigation and not for public consumption.” Detective Starsky scratched his throat, and I noticed he had inky hair poking out of his collar. “We’re not fond of sharing information with the girlfriends of suspects.”

  “So now he’s gone from a person of interest to a fullfledged suspect?”

  I didn’t like where this was going. No one seemed to be listening to my pleas that Brian needed a hand, not handcuffs.

  “Your boyfriend is on the defense team in a high profile money laundering case, were you aware of that, Miss Kendricks?” Starsky asked. “Because we’re just wondering if he got a little cozy with his firm’s client, maybe took something that wasn’t his and ended up in over his head.”

  Just what were they implying? That Brian was crooked?

  That he would jeopardize a case and his firm’s reputation, not to mention his life, by playing dirty?

  “Brian’s one of the best young defense attorneys in the city,” I said, talking faster than I meant to, barely keeping my tone civil. “He handles lots of criminal cases, plenty of them high profile, but he would never take money that wasn’t his.”

  Starsky squinted. “I didn’t say he took money.”

  “Then what—” I stopped myself before I finished.

  Yikes.

  Did they mean Trayla?

  Did they honestly believe Brian stole a stripper from a money laundering client?

  I would’ve laughed had I not seen how serious they all looked.

  “Detectives, if you’d allow me.” The gray-haired captain cleared her throat, and the pair of Dallas cops resumed their deadpan expressions. She turned her beady eyes on me. “The Addison police are fully cooperating with the City of Dallas in this investigation, and we’d like to do whatever we can for Mr. Malone, being that he lives in our jurisdiction. But we can’t assist him if we can’t speak with him.”

  I felt like water left to boil on the stove for too long, steaming up a storm and ready to overflow my pot.

  “For the tenth time, I don’t know where he is!” I snapped at them all, clenching my hands into fists. “I wish I did, but I don’t.” I uncurled my fingers and turned my palms up. “Nothing. That’s what I’ve got,” I assured them, feeling on the verge of tears, because I hated being so impotent while Brian seemed to have his whole world caving in on him. “I swear on my mother’s life.”

  “What a lovely sentiment, dear heart,” Cissy said, a dry edge to her drawl, and she patted my thigh.

  “Miss Kendricks”—it was apparently Starsky’s turn again—“we don’t want to harm your boyfriend, we just need to have a conversation with him. So don’t cover up for him and assume you’re doing him any favors. You’re not.”

  “My daughter is not hiding anything, nor is she a liar.”

  My mother bristled, squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin.

  Them’s fighting words, I thought. Go get ’em, Her Highness of Highland Park! Let the bloodletting begin!

  “If she had anything to confess, she would,” Cissy insisted.

  “So why don’t you go about your business of finding poor Mr. Malone instead of harassing law-abiding

  women, particularly one who keeps the mayor’s number on her speed dial.”

  Damned if that didn’t earn us a trio of dirty looks, but I was very proud of Mother for standing up to them, even though I had a fleeting fear that we’d be sent to solitary and made to live on bread and water while they detained us, without allowing us the usual phone call to summon Cissy’s armada of attorneys.

  Well, hey, I’d seen plenty of “when good cops go bad” stories, where some poor sap out for a stroll past curfew in New Orleans got clobbered, or a housewife making a nighttime dash to the twenty-four-hour Walgreens got arrested for a DUI because she had Nyquil in her system.

  I briefly envisioned my life behind bars and how I’d get along without a lid on my metal toilet. Maybe Martha Stewart could give me decorating tips. Then I tuned back into the conversation at hand and realized my mother wasn’t letting up.

  “Mrs. Kendricks, if you wouldn’t mind, we’d simply like your daughter to—”

  “Andrea has nothing else to offer, though you don’t seem to understand that,” Cissy cut Starsky off cold and continued her defense. “You seem to have glossed over the fact that Mr. Malone is obviously caught up in some kind of ungodly mess, and Andrea and I are both worried sick about him. He’s an upstanding young man and a fine lawyer at one of the most respected firms in the city. He’s not a wastrel and certainly not a killer.”

  I blinked, hearing her say those words, knowing they must be true, as my mother wouldn’t fib to the police.

  Holy cannoli.

  Cissy had vouched for Malone. She, at least, believed me.

  If I hadn’t heard her with my own ears, I’d figure I was hallucinating.

  Forget all those “milk for free” lectures. My stickler-for-manners mother had climbed the fence and jumped into the pasture with me, stepping right into a minefield of cow patties in her black Chanel boots.

  “Yeah,” I chimed in. Well, more like croaked. “Malone wouldn’t hurt a fly. If you knew him, you’d realize he’s one of the good guys.”

  “Perhaps you could advise him to turn himself in, Miss Kendricks, and then we’ll see what we can do,” Starsky said with a saccharine-sweet smile, doing his best “good cop” imitation, which pretty much stunk.

  “Why should I do that, if you’re only going to arrest him?” I shot back.

  “We’re not going to arrest him if he didn’t do anything wrong,” Hutch said. “But if he did, well, he’ll have to face the consequences.” He shrugged in an exaggerated way, encouraging me to imagine the worst.

  So I did.

  “You’ll probably interrogate him for hours without anyone knowing where he is, deprive him of food, water, and an attorney, and get him to make a bogus confession when he’s too delirious to know better.” I glared at all of them.

  Blame it on my spirit of anarchy, at least at the moment, since none of the White Hats seemed to care that Malone needed saving, not skewering. “Once you’ve set your sights on a suspect, you stop looking for anyone else, and I won’t let you railroad Brian, not when he didn’t do anything wrong except try to take a friend out for a good time before he ties the knot.”

  “Ms. Kendricks, maybe you should consider that your relationship to Mr. Malone could make you a person of interest as well,” Steel-haired Girl Cop said in a brittle tone, as if that was going to make me cave.

  Please.

  I’d survived worse threats from Cissy (with far more frightening consequences). I didn’t crumble easily.

  “Maybe you should consider that one of my best friends is a reporter,” I said, perhaps unwisely and not quite accurately, as my buddy Janet Graham was the society editor for the suburban Park Cities Press, not a crime writer for the Dallas Morning News. “I’m sure she’d be happy to do an exposé on abuse of power at several local police departments.”

  “Are you claiming abuse, Ms. Kendricks?” That damned blond detective looked ready to pounce.

  “I’m not exactly feeling the love,” I snapped, regretting my choice of words the moment they flew out of my yap.

  Since when had I turned into such a smart-mouth? Oh, yeah, since I’d left the birth canal.

  “I think we’re through here,” Cissy interjected and rose from her seat, reaching down for my arm, urging me up.

  “As you told us we could leave at any time, I believe now is the time. Andrea?” She dragged me toward the door, though none of the three police folks had budged an inch.

  “If you have any further questions, you know how to reach us. Or better still, if you need to converse with us further, why don’t you arrange it through Deputy Chief Anna Dean at the Highland Park P.D. I’ve co-chaired plenty of Widows and Orphans fund-raisers with her, and I’m sure she’
d be delighted to do me a favor.”

  You go, Mummy Dearest, I silently cheered.

  Then I followed on her boot heels, nearly bumping into her backside when she stopped abruptly, turning around for one last hurrah.

  She held up a finger, a brilliant smile on her puss. “Oh, and which one of you nice police people would like to drive us back to Mr. Malone’s apartment? I left my Lexus in the parking lot.”

  Within five minutes, we were ensconced in the backseat of an unmarked Dallas police car with Hutch riding shotgun and Starsky at the wheel.

  Not two words were exchanged in the brief time it took to get from the Addison P.D. to Malone’s building. I’d half expected another lecture from Frick and Frack en route, reminding me it was my civic duty to rat out my boyfriend’s hiding place, but they remained thankfully silent, checking the screen of an on-board computer.

  The rain had stopped, though the windows sweated with condensation from the still humid air.

  A van with the Channel 8 logo filled one of the parking spots, and, upon approach, I saw one of the omnipresent blond reporters from the station sticking a microphone in the face of a woman walking a dog.

  Ah, what a thrill, I thought with a shake of my head, getting your fifteen minutes of fame while your pup took a dump. I could already hear said neighbor telling Susie Reporter things like, “He was always so quiet. He seemed like such a nice guy. I can’t believe he’s a cold-blooded killer.”

  Oy.

  Cissy pointed out her champagne-hued Lexus sedan, and Starsky slid neatly into the empty slot beside it, thankfully nowhere near Ace Girl Journalist, her camera crew, and the small crowd beginning to gather around them, eager folks all hoping to get their mugs on the six o’clock

  news.

  “All right, duchesses. There you go,” Hutch said, as the car stopped, though neither detective made any move to let us out.

  My mother cleared her throat less than discreetly, as if that would remind them of their manners. Instead, our holster-wearing escorts sat lumplike in their respective seats, proving that chivalry was indeed dead, or at least dormant.

  At least the unmarked car had handles on the back doors, unlike the Addison P.D.’s squad car, which kept prisoners—and girlfriends and mothers of persons of interest—trapped in the rear seat.

  Before I made my escape, Hutch shoved a business card at me and said, “Be smart, Ms. Kendricks, and give us a call if you learn something.”

  I took the card, but rebelliously thought, Like hell I will.

  What kind of woman turned in her man to the fuzz?

  It was quite apparent that the police were after Malone to crucify him, not set him free from whatever spider’s web he’d gotten himself caught up in. Not that I had great insight into police procedure, but it seemed to me that once they had a suspect in mind, they didn’t often waver from that course.

  And I wasn’t about to see Brian go to jail for a crime I was sure he didn’t commit. Not if I could get to him first.

  Which I would. Somehow.

  I just wasn’t so sure what path I’d have to take.

  I figured I’d ring my good friend Allie and apprise her of Mother’s and my detainment in Addison, just as soon as I departed the detectives’ company.

  As if by osmosis, the cell in my bag started ringing as I put shoes to damp gravel and slammed the car’s rear door.

  I stepped away from the unmarked vehicle, which began to slowly roll away, and retrieved the gadget with the irritating ring tone, seeing an unfamiliar number as I flipped it open and answered, “Hello?”

  I heard a strangely garbled voice. “Andrea Kendricks?”

  it asked.

  “Uh-huh. Who’s this?” I couldn’t even tell if it was male or female. Sounded like someone was talking through a dish towel.

  “You still missing your boyfriend?”

  “What? How do you know about that?” I asked—the first thing that popped out of my mouth.

  “If you want him back alive, shut up and listen, and don’t call the media or the police. You understand?” the barely discernible voice demanded, and a frisson of fear shot through me so that I couldn’t have spoken if I’d wanted to.

  “It’s up to you, okay? Pay us the money or you’re gonna find pieces of your boyfriend all over New—um, Dallas. I won’t waste a bullet. I’ll just sharpen my knife. And I’d hate to get blood on his pretty pink shirt.”

  Despite my cotton-dry mouth, I got out, “What do you want from me?”

  “We want $212,000 in cash by midnight tonight. We’ll take it in Benjamins. You deliver it. No one else. We know what you look like, so no funny business. Got it?”

  I whispered, “Yes,” because it was the only answer that seemed fitting. I was already picturing a blade being sharpened, like on those Ronco commercials for Ginzu knives.

  “Be a good little girl, and he won’t get hurt, okay?

  We’ll contact you soon with instructions.”

  “Wait,” I piped up. “How do I know that you have Brian? Let me talk to him. Hello? Hello?”

  But there was nothing; merely dead air.

  It took a moment for the gist of the phone call to register; then a wave of panic filled my chest, and I could hardly catch my breath.

  Someone had Malone, and they wanted a ransom?

  I wished I could’ve laughed this off, but my gut told me it was real enough. Why else would the bad guys phone me unless they’d found out who I was from Brian?

  Unless they knew I was someone with access to money (and I was, courtesy of my generous trust fund from Daddy, though it’s not like I kept it in a piggy bank).

  Hell’s bells, this couldn’t be happening.

  What kind of nightmare was I trapped in?

  If I lived on Elm Street and Freddie Krueger was my next door neighbor, things would surely seem rosier than this.

  Tears stung my eyes, and I bit my lower lip to stop its trembling.

  Just when I thought nothing worse could possibly happen, it did.

  It already had.

  Chapter 14

  Malone had been kidnapped?

  Was it possible?

  Or was it a horrible hallucination, borne from inhaling an overdose of Eau de Sock while at Brian’s place, when I should have worn the OSHA-approved gas mask?

  But the call was real enough.

  I’d heard it with my own reliable ears, and the way my knees shook attested to its authenticity as well.

  What the devil was going on?

  My boyfriend was being held hostage.

  No wonder he couldn’t be found. He was probably imprisoned in some madman’s basement, chained to a radiator, made to lap up fetid water from a dog bowl.

  So I’d been right in thinking someone else was responsible for his vanishing act. I’d believed all along there was an outside force involved, and now I knew for sure there was, which scared the hell out of me, like nothing else.

  I tasted fear in my mouth and looked up, watching as the cop car pulled away and out of the parking lot, panic filling my chest as I realized I couldn’t tell them about the threat to Brian’s life.

  Could I?

  If you want him back alive, shut up and listen, and don’t call the media or the police, got it?

  I got it all right.

  No cops.

  No reporters.

  Unless I wanted Malone carved up like a Cobb salad.

  If anything happened to him and I was responsible, I would never forgive myself.

  A soft touch on my arm startled me, and I glanced up at my mother, standing at my elbow with a worried look on her face.

  “Is somethin’ wrong, Andrea sweetie?”

  I couldn’t meet her eyes, and instead fumbled with my cell, afraid to drop it in my bag for fear I’d miss another call from the bad guys, though they wouldn’t phone again so soon, would they?

  Regardless, I hung onto it, despite my shaky g
rip and fingers suddenly slick with sweat.

  “Andrea, whatever is the matter? And don’t try to tell me it’s nothing. You look whiter than Bunny Beeler’s new porcelain veneers.” She had her car keys in one hand, but reached for me with the other, tucking her thumb beneath my chin. “Who was that call from? Was it about Mr. Malone?

  Is he injured?”

  The last time I’d broken into tears in front of Cissy was . . . well, I couldn’t remember when. I tried to avoid that kind of situation if I could. There was something bred into me that always made me want to buck up, grin and bear it, never let ’em see me sweat.

  Though this was different, wasn’t it?

  I wondered if my daddy would have pearls of wisdom for a situation like this, some down-home advice to get me through this; because I couldn’t think of anything offhand that would make me feel less than frantic.

  The trembling in my legs increased, and I felt the rest of my body shudder, dying to join in and collapse in a heap.

  “Sweet pea, answer me. Did someone give you bad news about Brian? Well, worse than what we already know, of course, what with the police thinking he might’ve killed that erotic dancer.”

  Erotic dancer?

  I wanted to correct her, but my teeth started chattering,

  and I couldn’t form a single word.

  “Andrea, please, you’re scarin’ me.” My mother’s pale blue eyes bored into mine, the worry in them palpable, and I bit the inside of my cheek as I fought to get control of my emotions.

  “It’s bad,” I said, voice catching. “Really bad.”

  I saw my mother glance around us, at the crowd gathered around the reporter, still interviewing neighbors from Brian’s apartment complex.

  “In the car,” she commanded, obviously sensing I was on the verge of hysterics. She guided me toward the passenger door of her Lexus, hustled me in and then quickly appeared in the driver’s seat, starting the car and turning on the heat, though I was perspiring like a marathon runner.

  “What can I do, sweetheart?” she asked, leaning nearer so that I caught a huge whiff of Joy. She took my hand between her powdery soft ones and patted. “If you’d tell me what it is, perhaps I can help you. Was that Mr. Malone on the phone? Do you know where he is?”