Night of the Living Deb Page 9

  my neighbors.

  Disco’s infamous “I Will Survive” bounced through the speakers.

  Sing it, Gloria, I thought sadly as I made my way back to the sofa and curled up, dragging the throw over me and listening to my favorite “screw you jerk for leaving me”

  song of all time.

  I closed my eyes as “The King of Wishful Thinking” came on, another quintessential post breakup song. It was all about ignoring the hole in your heart and pretending you’d be all right, even if it wasn’t the truth.

  How could you, Malone? How could you do this to me?

  I squished my cheek into the pillow, fighting the tears as hard as I could. I was so angry, so disappointed, so utterly confused, but I’d be damned if I would cry myself out over a man. Not again. I’d done it enough through the years, and I refused to do it now, no matter how much it

  hurt.

  Sting started to wail “King of Pain,” and I jumped up from the couch and shut my CD player off.

  Enough already.

  Pathetic jilted chick sobbing into her pillow.

  How totally cliché.

  And how totally not me.

  I had never been the kind of female who didn’t feel complete without a man. I had a great life, loved my independence,

  and I was perfectly fulfilled when I was all by my lonesome. Surely, I had better things to do than act

  like a dopey girl who’d been wronged by her dude.

  Damned straight I did.

  Besides, Malone wasn’t exactly beating his breast and wailing over me, was he? No, siree Bob, he was getting his kicks with a piece of Trayla Trash.

  Not worth the salt of my tears.

  Roughly, I wiped my eyes and slapped at the switch to turn on the lights. Then I headed over to my easel.

  I initially filled my palette with black, picked up a clean brush and let her rip, sweeping boldly across the crimson and silver with angry strokes.

  I didn’t stop for hours, didn’t rest until I was too exhausted to lift the brush to the canvas. The result was something more violent than I’d intended, rawer emotionally, but there it was, my guts laid out in acrylics.

  It felt good, somehow, to have released all that pent-up angst, and I knew that I could sleep, at least. Well, it was something.

  So I went to bed, making sure to turn off the cell phone on my nightstand before I slipped under the covers and closed my eyes, too tired to weep.

  But not too tired to dream.

  I found myself wandering around the grounds of a state fair, brightly colored lights and overloud laughter swirling around me. I didn’t see anyone, though all the rides were in motion, the Ferris wheel rotating, the Tilt-a-Whirl spinning.

  I heard a voice, someone calling, “Andy, please, help me,” and I tried to follow it, but I wasn’t sure where it was coming from. Everything seemed to echo in my ears. The lights blurred my vision.

  Out of nowhere, a figure in a red cape flew at me, hooded so I could see no face, though she proffered a black pot in which a green stew bubbled.

  “Cabbage soup?” she asked in an odd sort of cackle.

  “Homemade cabbage soup?”

  I turned and ran from her, hearing that voice, still calling my name, and I entered the House of Mirrors, where I was suddenly surrounded by infinite reflections of myself, so I hardly knew where I started and the mirrors began.

  “Andy.”

  There it was again, only it sounded so near.

  I spun around and saw him, standing smack behind me.

  “Malone,” I said, glancing back, over my shoulder.

  But he wasn’t really there. Only more mirrors, deceiving me.

  “Brian, where are you?”

  I ran ahead to where I thought he was, but I hit the glass.

  Turned around and went the other way, only to smack into another dead end.

  “Tell Cissy I’m sorry to miss the party,” he was saying, starting to fade, looking blurrier by the moment. “I love her cabbage soup.”

  He kept talking, but it turned into gibberish, words that made no sense.

  I pounded the mirror with my fists, screaming his name, until the silvered walls around me shattered, raining shards of glass.

  Raining.

  Pitter-pat, pitter-pat.

  My eyes flew open, and I blinked at the gloom, grabbing at my clock on the nightstand, which showed nearly eight-thirty.

  The dim outside the shutters made sense when I realized it was actually raining, water tapping on the windowsill.

  Not slivers of glass.

  Then I heard a louder tap-tap, and it wasn’t my head hammering.

  I sat up in bed, strained to listen.

  Someone was knocking on my door.

  My T-shirt and striped sweatpants rumpled, I swung my feet to the floor and padded across the carpet that stretched wall-to-wall throughout the condo. Squinting through the peephole, I sighed at the sight of my mother, standing on my doormat, shaking out a large umbrella.

  What was she doing here?

  Mother rarely showed up anywhere uninvited. And I definitely hadn’t extended an invitation. Although she did have a sixth sense as to when I was at a low point; often the perfect time for her to twist my arm into doing something I wouldn’t do if I felt stronger. Maybe she needed another warm body for a committee she’d agreed to chair to raise money for out of work oil barons.

  God only knew.

  With Cissy, it could be anything.

  Reluctantly, I opened the door, and she looked hard at me, wearing an impatient frown.

  “Do you realize your phone is off the hook?” she asked, front and center, before using her umbrella handle to push the door out of my hands, wide enough for her to enter past me. “I’ve been trying to call you all morning, for heaven’s sake. What on earth’s the matter with you? Are you sick?”

  Was I sick?

  Interesting question, I mused as I shut and locked the door.

  Did heartsick count? Although I was officially in denial about that, being the neofeminist that I purportedly was at heart, far beneath my ever-sensitive girlie girl skin.

  “I have to finalize the menu for your birthday party with the caterer by noon, since you keep changing your mind . . .”

  I kept changing my mind?

  “. . . and I’ve got a million things to do before Wednesday besides, not to mention getting ready for my trip with Stephen this coming weekend. Only you seem to be avoiding the world, so Mohammad had to come to the mountain.

  You don’t look well.” Her finely plucked brows shot up. “Good God, you’re bleeding!”

  I had no idea what she was talking about, until I glanced down at my arms and realized I had smears of crimson on them. No one ever said that art was neat.

  “It’s paint,” I told her. “I was up late last night. Couldn’t sleep,” I admitted, then bit my lip to keep from saying more. I wasn’t yet ready to tell her about Malone. I didn’t

  know if I’d ever be ready for that.

  “You don’t have the flu, do you?”

  She held the umbrella between us, perhaps to ward off potential germs. In her dark cape, she looked rather like Mary Poppins, if Mary had been a society dame and dressed in Chanel and pearls instead of funny outfits.

  “Do I need to call Dr. Cooper?” she pressed.

  When I shook my head, she lowered her weapon, which was dripping onto my carpet, as if it were sobbing in sympathy.

  Seeing as how I had no umbrella stand, she simply propped the thing against the wall then proceeded to remove her driving gloves, but not her black Burberry. She had on black suede boots that should’ve been destroyed by the rain.

  But, like Cissy herself, they appeared indestructible.

  “Did you hear what I said before, Andrea?” she prodded.

  “About trying to reach you and not getting through?”

  “I heard you,” I replied.
>
  “All I got was a busy signal, so you must’ve knocked the receiver awry, and your cell was turned off, though I left a message . . . ah, there! I was right.”

  She zoomed in on my old Princess phone that I’d pulled off the sofa table, and she gracefully stooped to retrieve it and the handset, returning both to their rightful home. The moment she did, the damned thing twittered maniacally.

  Mother raised her eyebrows, and I shrugged.

  So she answered, with a perfectly drawled, “Andrea

  Kendricks’s residence,” as if she were my social secretary.

  A hilarious thought, though I didn’t smile.

  “Yes, all right, well, I’ll see,” she replied to whoever was on the other end, before she proffered the handset.

  “It’s someone named Allison Price. She has news about Mr. Malone. Is there a problem with your beau, my dear?

  Is he ill? Is that why he didn’t show up for brunch?”

  “He’s not ill, no,” I said, though he could be, for all I knew. He could have some type of rare brain fever that caused him to act like a lout.

  “Andrea, your eyelid is twitching. Do you need a Xanax?”

  Oh, baby, a whole lot more was twitching than my eyelid.

  “No Xanax”—not yet—“just the phone, Mother, please,”

  I said, and snatched it away, spewing into the receiver, “I don’t want to hear, Allie, because I don’t care. He called here last night, apologizing for bugging out on me, can

  you believe, and told me he needed space. Space? For crud’s sake, what kind of an excuse is that when I gave him all the space he needed? It’s not like I was his keeper or anything.”

  Amazing how quickly I’d taken up the “Brian is a jerk”

  banner after Malone’s terse “Dear Jane” message delivered in chicken fashion via Ma Bell. I’m surprised he didn’t go all out and send an e-mail.

  My mother stood at my elbow, listening ever so intently, perfectly made-up eyes going wider by the minute.

  Allie tried to say something, but I beat her to it.

  “You were right. He’s a jerk, a clod, a caveman, and I don’t care if he does go to Vegas with that dancer slash hooker, because he can rot in Hell for all I care,” I went on in a rush, only to have her cut off my tirade with a shrill, “Shut up, Kendricks, and turn on your TV right this minute! Channel 8, and hurry!”

  Not that I made it a point to obey the Attila the Blonde, but I was too curious not to, being as how she sounded downright frantic.

  I picked up the remote, gave it a punch, and flipped to Channel 8 just in time to see my boyfriend’s—um, former boyfriend’s—face in a photograph with the caption wanted for questioning beneath.

  Geez. I mean, I was certainly pretty upset with him, but I didn’t expect the police to get in on the act.

  As if that weren’t enough, I saw the SkyCam helicopter zeroing in on a red car that looked uncannily like Brian’s.

  They did a quick zoom, and I stepped closer to the TV screen, noting yellow crime scene tape and orange cones boxing in the vehicle while men in dark shirts removed items from the trunk in paper bags.

  What was this? A morning rerun of CSI?

  I turned the sound up, catching a single word before the perky anchor babe veered away from the scene and to a story about food poisoning at a local cafeteria.

  My head spun, as the word I heard wasn’t a good one at all, considering that it was “murder.”

  Chapter 11

  “Did you see it? Did you see it? Can you even believe it? It’s like a soap opera minus Susan

  Lucci and starring Malone!” Allie screamed in my ear, and I couldn’t tell if she was horrified or excited.

  “It’s hard to even fathom that the boys in blue are on the prowl for our man Brian, who, God knows, is about as dangerous as Charlie Brown.”

  Brian was a wanted man.

  So I’d been dating a “bad boy” after all?

  Despite his always saying “please” and “thank you” and “yes, ma’am,” and dressing nicely, showing up on time, and never letting a door close in my face?

  Who’d have thunk it?

  Allie’s squawking continued: “It’s been all over the airwaves this morning, and the firm’s already fielded so many calls from reporters that the switchboard operator nearly had a nervous breakdown. They had to bring in temps just to handle the overload. It’s worse than when Abramawitz was defending that councilman’s wife who poisoned her philandering husband by putting coolant in

  his Gatorade.”

  I barely caught her every other word, as I was still digesting the fact that the police were after Brian.

  How many women saw their boyfriends’ faces on the morning news, noting that the police were hunting for them, unless they’d dated the Unibomber?

  “Oh, boy” didn’t even begin to cover it.

  And what the heck did “murder” have to do with Malone?

  Other than my own lethal thoughts about him.

  Obviously he wasn’t dead if the police needed to chat with him—though if I’d gotten my hands on him last night after his “Dear Jane” call, I would’ve committed assault and battery, at the very least, to say nothing of homicide.

  So who’d been iced? And how was Brian involved, other than the red coupe surrounded by crime scene tape zeroed in on by the news chopper looked a lot like his Acura.

  Could be lack of sleep, but I suddenly felt dizzy.

  If my body had an error message, it would have been blinking, “System Overload.”

  I hadn’t read the paper lately, but I was beginning to think my horoscope must’ve had a big warning label that said: Danger! Cosmic Crapping Ahead!

  Just wish someone had alerted me that merely breathing these days was bad for my health. I had that sinking feeling again that I should’ve stayed in bed, the covers pulled over my head, ignoring the world entirely. Maybe even through the week ahead, missing my birthday completely, which might not be a bad thing seeing as how I was racing past thirty at an alarming speed, obviously

  slated to die alone, from the looks of things.

  “Kendricks, hello? Are you still there?” Allie barked.

  “Metaphysically? Or literally?” I asked, because there was a difference; but she didn’t seem to care.

  “Well, there’s more to all of this, if you’ll pay attention.”

  My my, but she was snippy. And I was the one who’d been dumped like a pound of rotten hamburger.

  “I’m all ears.”

  “Malone is AWOL, girl. He didn’t show up at work this morning, and he didn’t leave any kind of message, not even on anyone’s voice mail. Old Abe isn’t any too happy with him, particularly right after he put us on the Oleksiy case and we’ve got a preliminary hearing on that one in a

  matter of weeks. We just started the process of interviewing some newly added prosecution witnesses. Well, Brian did, anyway. I was busy with a depo. He set up a couple

  meetings for Friday afternoon, but that’s all I know. Only now Malone’s bailed, and no one can find the list or any notes on his interviews.”

  So Brian had bailed on me and the firm, when he and Allie were working on a big case, ticking off the Big Cheese, J. D. Abramawitz?

  All right, dumping a girlfriend wasn’t nice, but it wasn’t career-ending.

  But crapping out on a job he loved right before the start of a trial?

  Uh-uh.

  No way.

  No how.

  That was one thing I knew, deep down inside and every which way but loose, that Brian would never do.

  Every nerve in my body tingled as my emotions flipflopped,

  from wanting to kill my missing dude to “Uh-oh, something’s wrong.”

  Well, wasn’t it a woman’s prerogative to change her mind (in this case, by the day, if not the hour)?

  So I returned to the Land of Denial, bypassing the dutyfree shop altoge
ther and heading straight for the emotionalbaggage claim.

  I didn’t care what all the signs pointed to . . . it didn’t matter that Malone himself had called to personally punt our relationship . . . or that Barmaid Lu at The Men’s Club swore she’d seen him leave with Trayla, the pole dancer who purportedly had a ticket to a new life; because something stronger needled at me, reminded me of my daddy’s words about rushing to judgment.

  I wouldn’t do it again, not until I fully understood the breadth and scope of recent goings-on and how they concerned Malone.

  “Hello, space cadet?” Allie trilled, not sounding thrilled that I kept drifting off during our conversation. “Earth to Andy Kendricks?”

  “Here,” I said, adding quickly, “How much trouble is he in, Allie, really? And don’t sugarcoat it.” Like she’d ever do that.

  “You recall the hurricane that demolished New Orleans?”

  Oh, man.

  “That big, huh?”

  “Bigger.” Allie paused, but a second later blurted out, “Abramawitz called an emergency board meeting for this afternoon. I think they’re planning to can Malone if he doesn’t turn up and explain himself by, like, yesterday.

  He must be thinking with that pea brain in his pants if he’d risk his career at ARGH for hot sex with a

  stripper.”

  I did a mental delete of that last sentence, my mind so focused on everything else she’d said: the calls to the firm, the emergency board meeting, Brian losing his job. A job he loved intensely.

  Oy vey.

  I gnawed on my bottom lip, getting a serious knot in my belly; sure that something was controlling Malone’s behaviour besides his own free will.

  But what?

  Or who?

  “I truly don’t think this is about sex with a stripper, Allie,”

  I said, though of course I didn’t know what it was about, not yet. “You have to realize by now that all of this is inconsistent with who Brian is. Secondhand stories aside, he just wouldn’t do any of this. His job means everything to him.”

  Maybe more than me, or at least as much.

  “Wow, Kendricks. I’m amazed at your loyalty. You’re hell-bent on defending the guy, aren’t you?” She sighed, clearly reluctant to concede I might be right, that perhaps Brian wasn’t at fault, just in way over his head. “Let’s table the ‘is Malone a liar’ discussion for now, okay? I’m not sure what I think, but I’m having my doubts. Does that make you feel better?”