Black Lace (18 page)

When they finally came up for air, Drake wanted to spend the rest of his life holding her against his heart in just this way. And Lacy’s thoughts mirrored his. She didn’t want to leave his arms ever.

Drake confessed something that he couldn’t suppress any longer. “I’m in love with you, woman. Big-time.”

She was in love with him too, had been since their long weekend in Holland. “Ditto.”

He stared down. “Really?”

“Yes.”

He smiled. “When did you know?”

“Holland. You?”

“Truthfully? From the first day we met. I still remember how mad you were.”

“True dat.”

He chuckled. “Guess we can call ourselves an official couple now, huh?”

She nodded. “I think so.”

He hugged her tight. “Damn, that feels good.”

She grinned and held him tight too. “Yes, it does.”

So Lacy became, according to the newspapers, the First Girlfriend.

Friday morning at work, Lacy’s phone rang. Ida came in. “There’s a woman named Melissa on the line. She sounds like something’s wrong.”

“Melissa who?”

“She says she met you at the Northwest Activities Center. She was there with Lenny.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Lacy picked up. “Lacy Green. How may I help you?”

“Miss Green?” The female voice sounded frantic and scared.

“Yes, this is Lacy. What’s wrong?”

“This is Melissa Curtis. Lenny’s friend. You gotta come over here and get this tape.”

“What tape?”

“I don’t have time to explain on the phone.” Instead, she gave Lacy an address on the west side. “Please hurry, Miss Green. I don’t think we have a lot of time.”

“Melissa?” Lacy said. “Melissa!” But she’d hung up.

Lacy set the phone down and hollered for Ida.

Because Lacy didn’t know the city well enough, Ida drove. A traffic accident on the Lodge made the trip much longer than it should have been, and by the time they found the street and then the large brick apartment building that matched the address, an hour had passed. Lacy walked briskly up the walk while Ida remained in the Caddy. The neighborhood was not a good one, and Ida didn’t want to have to shoot anyone dumb enough to try and jack her.

Lacy pulled the door open and was almost knocked down by a man coming out. He reached out to keep her from falling. “’Scuse me, ma’am,” he whispered, then proceeded briskly down he steps. He had his coat collar turned up, so she didn’t get a good look at his face but his big fish eyes were hard to miss.

Inside, she quickly walked past the mailboxes and headed to the elevator. A handwritten
OUT OF ORDER
sign was stuck to the doors with a piece of silver duct tape. Melissa had given her an apartment number on the third floor, so she looked around for the stairs, found them, then headed up. Her cell phone rang. Since getting a new number, Lacy was no longer paranoid about answering it.

Ida was on the other end. “Are you okay?”

“So far. Did you see that man almost knock me down?”

“The one with the big pop eyes?”

Lacy reached the third floor. “Yeah. Okay, here’s apartment 32. Hold on.”

She knocked, and it slowly swung open in response.
Lacy stopped. Adrenaline began to pump. She knocked on the door frame and called out, “Melissa. It’s Lacy.”

She looked at the other four apartment doors on the floor, thinking Melissa might be visiting a neighbor, but the doors were all closed. There was no way to tell how many were occupied, if at all. Pushing Melissa’s door open wider, she walked in. A TV was blaring from somewhere inside. “Melissa?”

The narrow kitchen with its dirty dishes and pots of dried food on the stove led to a small living room with two windows facing the street. The place was in shambles, books and VHS tapes strewn everywhere. Furniture was turned over and there was broken glass on the floor. That’s when Lacy saw her. A wide-eyed, dead Melissa was lying on the green shag carpet in a widening pool of blood. Her throat had been slashed. Lacy’s stomach churned and she ran out of the apartment to the hallway. As her heart pounded, she fought the bile rising in her throat and drew in a few steadying breaths. Trembling, she raised the phone. “Ida, she’s dead. I’m calling 911.”

The police and an ambulance arrived with sirens and flashing lights about ten minutes after the call. Detective Franks met Lacy in the hallway and took her outside to his car while his colleagues stayed behind to set up the crime scene. Lacy was shook up, and the detective let her take her time telling them the story. “She wanted me to come by and pick up a tape.”

Detective Franks said, “What kind of tape?”

“I don’t know.”

He was writing on his small notepad. “Care to guess?”

Lacy met his eyes, then told him about the visit she’d gotten from Lenny Durant and Bales. “It could be related to that, but I don’t know.”

“This is Lenny Durant of BAD?”

“Yes, and the name on the note left on my car.”

“I remember that. Do you know where he is?”

“No.” Lacy couldn’t get the image of the murdered Melissa out of her mind. The chills that coursed up her arms made her hug herself. Ida, who was seated next to her, answered the detective’s questions, but she had no more information to add about the mysterious tape.

“Did you see anyone while you were entering? Did you pass anybody on the stairs?’

Lacy told him about the man with the big eyes. “He almost knocked me down coming out, but he was polite and kept going.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”

Lacy shrugged. “Maybe.”

He then asked Ida. “Did you see the man too?”

“I did. After he left the building, he went toward the corner, but I didn’t pay much attention to him after that.”

“Think you might recognize him again?”

“I’m like Lacy. He had his coat collar pulled up so I didn’t get a real good look at his face. Saw the eyes when he liked to knock her down, though.”

“Okay. I need you to come to the precinct and look through our perp albums. Be a real help if we could do it right now.”

Both women agreed, so a few minutes later Ida and Lacy trailed the detective back to his office.

It took them over an hour to find him. “Bingo,” Lacy called out grimly. “Is this him, Ida?”

Ida leaned over her shoulder. “Sure looks like him.”

The picture showed a light-skinned, pock-faced man with eyes like a fish. His name was Benjamin Madison, aka Fish.

The detective asked them both, “You’re sure now?”

They nodded.

He smiled. “Good. Thanks. We have some papers for you to sign and then you can be on your way. We’ll keep you posted.”

Ida and Lacy drove back to the office.

From the window in his trailer office City Councilman Reynard Parker watched the cadaver dog and his handler making their way over the mountain-high landfill. The search had been going on for over two weeks. Parker’s anger over having them in his business was tempered by the pleasure that they hadn’t found anything, and if Fish was right, they never would, but there were other worries on his plate too.

According to the newspapers, witnesses had seen a man leaving Melissa Curtis’s building the morning of her murder. Fish assumed it was the woman he’d run into at the door, but the papers hadn’t given up any more details. Fish had killed Curtis because she refused to give up Durant’s location. In an effort to find an answer, he’d rifled her apartment and found a VHS on the kitchen counter marked
Parker
. He also found
her cell phone, both of which he brought back. The tape had a short, night-shot video of barrels being loaded. The next bit of footage had almost given Parker a heart attack. All of the dumping had been filmed. A hand suddenly came into the picture, lifted the plastic plate the crews used to cover the license plates of the trucks involved and showed the plate numbers to the camera.

Parker had angrily shut if off. He didn’t need to see any more. The tape had enough evidence for the state regulatory commission to suspend his license and maybe send him to jail. Finding Durant had become critical. He was too smart to have had only one copy of the evidence. If Fish could find Durant, then Parker would know what he was facing. Right now he was in the dark. It was impossible to know what Melissa Curtis had intended to do with the tape, but the last phone call she’d made from her cell had been to Lacy Green. How the two women were tied together was a mystery too, but since Fish was the one who would be up for murder, it was his job to clean up this mess and make sure the witnesses weren’t around to testify.

Parker was just about to leave the office and head downtown to take care of his council duties when he saw a big black car rumbling its way across the uneven ground toward the trailer he used as his office. Everything about the car screamed police, so he simply stood and waited. Before Wheeler’s death, his life had been smooth as glass. Now he felt like he was headed for a cliff.

Lacy put in a call to Detective Franks. “Anything new on the investigation?”

“Not really. You said she called you that morning, right?”

“Yes, she did.”

“We can’t find her cell phone, and her bedroom had been tossed. Makes us think the killer was looking for something.”

“Did your people find the tape?”

“We found hundreds of them in her bedroom. Her mother said Ms. Curtis was also a computer geek, but there was nothing on any of the tapes worth her losing her life over.”

“What about Madison?”

“Nothing yet. We ran down his old parole officer and he gave us a lead on where he might be working. Some detectives went to check the tip out this morning, but his employer swore he hasn’t seen Madison in at least a week. You wanta guess who his boss is?”

“Who?’

“City Councilman Reynard Parker. Madison works for Parker Environmental.”

Lacy felt the hair on her neck rise. “This is getting uglier and uglier, isn’t it?”

“You got that right.”

Lacy found it hard to think, but asked, “Is Madison the man who’s been calling me?”

“Nothing points to that right now. Too bad law enforcement doesn’t store voice samples of felons the way it does fingerprints and face photos.”

Lacy thought that would have been an immense help.

“We’re tearing up the city looking for Madison, though. We faxed his picture to the airlines and the bus and trains stations in case he tries to skip town.”

“That’s good to know.”

“Don’t worry, Ms. Green. It won’t be long before we catch him.”

Lacy hoped he was right.

Lenny was waiting for dark. He’d gotten the call about Melissa’s death and knew she’d been killed because of her ties to him. Melissa had come to the environmental movement by way of her older brother, Hugh. He’d served during Desert Storm and returned to the States sick as a dog from something the doctors couldn’t figure out. Melissa was a high school student at the time, and she was convinced her brother’s sickness came from his time overseas. The army denied any such association, and told thousands of other families with sick and dying vets the same thing. When Hugh died a few years later, fighting environmental hazards became Melissa’s whole world. And now she was dead.

Lenny felt bad about that. Real bad. Angry too, because they didn’t have to kill her. Was life that meaningless to them? How could profits from trash hauling, of all things, outweigh a woman’s right to be on the planet? Her death answered all those questions, however. Once it got dark, he was going to
cruise around until he got his hands on his weapon of choice, and then he was going hunting, just like in the old days when he and his old man used to hunt rats at night. Only these rats were going to be the two-legged kind.

He had tried to work through the system by gathering evidence for the folks downtown to use, going to meetings and stuff, and Melissa’s death had been the result. Now he was going to do this his way.

Lacy was preparing to leave the
office when the phone rang. Now that the police had a tap on her outside line, she felt secure answering it again. “Lacy Green. May I help you?”

“’Afternoon, Ms. Green.”

It was him!

“Did you like my last present?” he asked with a low laugh. “Your car looked so stunning in red. Tell Lenny I need to see him or you may have to join Melissa.”

He hung up.

Lacy’s hand was shaking so badly it took her two times to fit the phone back into the cradle.
Lord, her stalker and Melissa’s murderer were the same man!
Pulling herself together she made two calls: first to Detective Franks and then to Drake.

After Franks and his partner left, Lacy looked across her office to where the tight-jawed Drake
stood. The police traced the call to another pay phone. Uniformed officers were combing the area around the phone, but just like the earlier foray, Franks didn’t have much hope of finding any clues. Drake had stood by silently during the interview, but Lacy could feel his anger. “Hey,” she asked him softly, “you okay?”

“No, and I won’t be until they find him.”

“Me either.”

“Walter and I are not letting you out of our sight.” Walter was now down in the garage making sure no damage had been done to her new car.

“That’s fine. I’m not some stupid woman in a movie. I
want
somebody standing between me and him. The more the better.”

Drake smiled for the first time since her disturbing call. “Good. I’d really rather have you at my place, but I know you won’t say yes to that.”

“You’re starting to know me well, Your Honor.”

“We’ll put someone on Ida too.”

As if on cue, she walked in. “Ida don’t need protecting. Herbert and I will be fine. You just take care of my girl, Mayor Randolph.”

Herbert was Ida’s husband and if anyone did manage to get by him, there were three, six-foot-four-inch sons, all over 280, waiting to step in and take up his slack. Lacy wasn’t worried about the pistol-packing grandma Ida at all. If anything, Benny Madison was the one who’d better beware of Ida and her men. Mess around, get his butt kicked and then get killed.

“Just came in to say I’m gone. See you tomorrow.”

Ida’s exit was Drake’s cue to ask, “You want to get something to eat?”

“Only if I can take it back to my place. Not in the mood for a crowded restaurant.”

Drake understood.

Lacy walked over and put her arms around his waist and her head on his chest. He wrapped his arms around her in return, and the feel of him squeezing her tight made the awful last few hours much better. “Madison scares me to death.”

“I know.” The man had threatened Lacy’s life, and Drake wanted to exchange the white hat he usually wore for one as black as his mood. He wanted Madison dead. Period. He’d give the police a few more days to bring him in, then he and NIA would start a hunt of their own. “What do you want to eat?”

“Pizza’s good.”

“Then pizza it’ll be.”

They called to have a pizza delivered to Lacy’s place. Drake also called Walter, who was downstairs in the garage, to let him know he would be walking Lacy down to the car so Walter needn’t come back up to the office for her.

Drake wound up riding home with them because he couldn’t handle not having Lacy in sight. At the apartment, she opened the locks and let them in.

“Walter, we really need to find you something better to sleep on than that sleeping bag,” she said. “It has to be uncomfortable.”

“It is, but it’s okay. His Honor isn’t paying me to sleep.”

Drake laughed. “I’m not paying you at all.”

Lacy looked between the men. “You two must be real good friends.”

Walter nodded. “Me and his big brother taught him everything he knows.”

Drake rolled his eyes. “The man lies
a lot,
Lacy, just remember that.”

The buzzer blared, and Lacy went to the intercom. Walter gave her a look, then stepped in front of her. “You don’t answer the door, the phone, or any other form of communication from now on. That’s my job.” He hit the buzzer and called, “Yeah.”

It was the pizza man.

While he made his way up, Walter said to her, “In the bedroom. If it’s not a real delivery, we don’t want to be worried about where you are.”

She looked at Drake, and he pointed. She put her hand on her hip to show him what she thought of being ordered around, even if it was for her own safety, but she went.

The pizza delivery person turned out to be the real thing, and a few minutes later they were seated on the floor enjoying the hot pie. Drake had taken off his suit coat, and for the first time Lacy saw the holster and gun strapped under his arm. Walter had removed his leather coat to show he was armed as well. Hers was in her purse.

Drake asked, “You still going to the gun range?”

Lacy nodded. “Yep. Walter has been a great help too.”

Walter asked, “Do you think you could use your weapon if push came to shove?”

“Yes. Although the first time I shot a duck, I threw up, and didn’t shoot anything but targets and skeet after that.” She looked at the men. “This is different. The duck wasn’t trying to take my life. Madison is.”

Drake was satisfied that she’d be able to take someone down if she had to, and that made him feel much better.

Later that evening they gathered around Lacy’s TV to watch the game. The NBA playoffs were under way, and the hometown Pistons were on their way back to the Eastern Conference championship if they could eliminate Philly tonight. At halftime Detroit was up by three. Lacy, Drake, and Walter were discussing what might happen in the third quarter when the sound of the door buzzer interrupted them.

Walter hopped up to answer it. “Yeah.”

“Let us in,” the voice boomed over the intercom.

He laughed. “Come on up.”

Remembering her instructions from earlier, Lacy got up to go into the bedroom, but Drake stopped her. “It’s okay, it’s only my brother Myk.”

Lacy smiled. She was finally going to meet the owner of the house in Holland and the man who, according to Walter, helped Walter teach Drake everything he knew.

A knock sounded, and Walter let in first a tall dark-skinned man, who was followed by three other people. One was a tall light skinned man wearing dark
glasses and a long dirty trench coat, and two women; one of whom was short and pregnant and wearing a Piston’s throwback jersey over a red T-shirt, the other woman was taller, rounder, and in her jewelry, designer suit, heels, and fine leather coat looked like a movie star on vacation.

Drake was over hugging everyone, especially the man in the coat, who cracked, “Hey, don’t bend the coat.”

Drake laughed. “When did you get into town?”

“About an hour ago. Myk and Sarita picked us up at the airport. We’re heading back east after Gran’s party.”

Drake said, “Lacy, I want you to meet my brothers, Myk and Saint, and their wives, Sarita and Narice.”

“Hello,” Lacy said. This was a real surprise.

The brothers gave her polite hellos, and their smiling wives did the same.

Lacy sensed they were all checking her out, but since she was doing the same thing, she didn’t mind. “Come join us. We were just watching the game.”

Sarita threw up a hand and said, “Hallelujah, a woman who likes sports. Good job, Your Honor.”

Lacy smiled hearing that Sarita called Drake by his title, too, and that she approved of Lacy.

Sarita then plopped down on the couch, her attention now glued to the halftime analysts.

Narice smiled, took a seat on the couch next to her sister-in-law, then removed her leather coat. “You know, Philly’s going to win the second half.”

Sarita didn’t even look at her. “Narice, I love you, but you really need to stop drinking.”

Everybody laughed, even Narice, then they all settled in to watch the second half.

The Pistons won, and Narice’s Sixers were forced to try again next year. With the game over, everyone got their coats and gathered by the door to say their good-byes. Lacy had a great time and was thankful that Narice and Sarita hadn’t been stuck up or hard to like.

Sarita gave her a strong hug, then said, “Don’t worry. With these Vachon men in your life, Madison will have to go through fire to get to you.”

For some reason, Lacy wasn’t surprised that Sarita knew what was going on. Then Narice added coolly, “And if he gets past them, Sarita and I will be waiting.”

The four men looked at each other and shook their heads in amusement.

Walter said, “Where do you all find these women?”

Everyone laughed.

After the visitors left, Drake and Walter went back to the TV to watch the Lakers against the Clippers. Lacy went to bed. She had work in the morning.

When Lacy got up the next morning, the sun was shining and rays of sunshine played against the bare wood floors of her bedroom. She was dressed and ready to go and had been tipping around in order not to awaken Walter, whom she assumed was still sleeping. She stood there in the silence for a moment and
tried to gather herself for the day ahead. When somebody calls and threatens your life you really don’t want to leave the house, and she was no exception. Madison murdered Melissa Curtis, and the idea that he was now after her, scared her to death. What she really wanted to do was crawl back into bed, pull the covers over her head, and stay there until they caught him, locked him up, and threw away the key. But she decided to go to work; staying home with nothing to do but worry would only make the bogeyman bigger. At least at her job she’d be busy and her mind would be occupied by something other than imagining Madison around every corner. Her decision had nothing to do with bravery or
I’m badder than him
, or anything like that; it just made sense.

Her bag over her arm, Lacy stepped out of the room and saw Drake asleep in her yellow chair. He had the sleeping bag thrown over himself for warmth. The picture he made pulled at her heartstrings. As if he’d sensed her watching, his eyes opened and he smiled at her sleepily. “Hey, baby.”

“Hey yourself,” she called back softly. “What’re you still doing here? Where’s Walter?”

“His stepson was in an accident early this morning and he went meet to his wife Shirley at the hospital.”

“Is the son okay?”

“Yeah, car was wrecked but Jerome checked out okay. Some bumps and bruises.” He sat up, then said, “You sure look good first thing in the morning.”

Heat touched Lacy’s cheeks and she dropped her
eyes before meeting his smile. “I’m sorry you had to sleep on the chair. You must feel like a pretzel.”

“I do, but I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.”

Lacy wondered if there was a woman alive able to resist him or that boyish smile. He had become such a blessing in her life. “Was Walter coming back to take me to work?”

He unfolded himself from the chair. “No, he’ll be back this afternoon. I’ll ride with you to work. Just let me brush my teeth and throw some water on my face.”

Lacy could see that his suit and white shirt had taken quite a beating. They were as wrinkled as pretzels, too.

He looked down at himself. “I’ll shower and change when I get to the office.”

He grabbed Walter’s backpack and slipped into the bathroom. Ten minutes later they were outside, heading to her new car, and Lacy’s paranoia about Madison returned. “Maybe I’ve seen too many movies, but my car isn’t going to blow up now, is it?”

Drake shook off his tiredness. “We probably saw the same movies. Hold on, let me make a call.”

He punched in a number, put the phone to his ear and said, “Let me speak to Uncle Gadget.”

Lacy stared in confusion, but he simply smiled.

About ten minutes later Saint drove up in a souped-up black Escalade. When he got out wearing that battered coat, he reminded Lacy of an Old West gunfighter. She wondered if he ever took the glasses
off. “’Morning, Lacy. Your Honor. What do you need?”

“Just want to make sure her car doesn’t go boom.”

Saint nodded as if that made sense to him.

Lacy stared on not knowing what to say or think.

Out of his one of his coat pockets, Saint removed a small device about the size of an Ipod. He pointed it toward her new silver Crossfire then took a slow walk around the perimeter. When he was done, he slipped the little sensor back into a pocket. “Think she’s okay. Anything else?”

Drake shook his head. “Nope. Thanks.”

“See you later.” He hopped back into the Escalade and rolled away.

Lacy watched his departure in amazement. “Who did you say your brother works for again?”

“The government.”

“Doing what?”

Drake shrugged. “This and that.”

“That’s what I figured.”

She hit the clicker for the locks, and once she and Drake were buckled in, she steered the coupe out of the lot and out onto Jefferson. They were both grinning.

The driver of the Parker Environmental truck caught smuggling drugs over the border back in early April decided he’d had enough of the city jail he’d been languishing in and began singing like a Temptation to the feds. He implicated Parker in everything from drug smuggling to illegal dumping to kickbacks. An hour later a warrant was issued for Parker’s arrest and
he was picked up and placed in custody. He posted bond and was out an hour later, but had to surrender his passport as part of the arrangement.

Drake and Myk met with the NIA board over lunch in Myk’s boardroom. The conversation centered on the Parker investigation. “Why’d the truck driver sing now as opposed to earlier?” Drake asked.

One of the members said, “Parker promised he’d take care of the driver’s family but hasn’t so far, and since it was looking like Parker was going to hang him out to dry, the driver decided he wasn’t going to be the emperor’s sacrifice.”

Myk said, “Too bad he wasn’t that smart when he first got busted, or this might be over by now.”

Drake added, “And Melissa Curtis might still be alive.”

Myk met Drake’s eyes and nodded almost imperceptibly, but it didn’t make Drake feel any better about the circumstances leading to the young woman’s death, especially now that the killer was after Lacy. He’d grieve for the rest of his life if anything happened to her. When he first organized NIA, one of the things he and Myk discussed was whether they were doing the right thing in the way they operated. The decision to forge ahead had been okay when they were riding roughshod over the rights of drug dealers and their fat cat suburban suppliers. He hadn’t even minded snatching gang bangers off the street and forcing them into education and rehabilitation programs, whether the bangers wanted to be there or not, because the programs had been successful. But this
thing with Lacy and Melissa Curtis was different. He and the NIA board had played God, and in their wisdom decided that their way was the only way, and as a result a woman had died.