Blind Dates Can Be Murder (44 page)

“Chief?” she said loudly as Chewie barked.

He jumped, startled, and then he slid out from under the car and sat up, his face telling Jo he’d rather see anyone but her at that moment.

“I’m sorry, Chief. I know you’re tired of hearing from me, but something happened. I had to talk to you about it.”

As she watched, he almost seemed to slump before her eyes. His posture became burdened, his face heavily lined. She realized that this was the chief she usually knew, not the relaxed man who’d been having fun tinkering with his car.

“So what happened?” he asked, all business as he stood and pulled on a button-down shirt over his T-shirt. “You okay?”

“I’m okay now,” she replied. “But things have definitely taken a turn for the worse.”

“There’s some lawn chairs over there in the corner,” he said, adjusting his cuffs. “Why don’t you grab a pair and we’ll sit and you can tell me all about it.”

“Okay, we have to wait thirty minutes and then we can rinse it out. This is so exciting. It’s going to be gorgeous.”

Lettie was sitting in a chair in the middle of Marie’s kitchen, with stinky goop all over her hair. She had taken off her glasses while Marie had applied the stuff, and now the room was in a pleasant soft focus. Her eyesight wasn’t really that bad. Maybe she could get contacts one day and ditch the giant glasses once and for all.

“While we’re waiting, what do you say we play with some makeup?”

“Sure,” Lettie said. She was still trying to think of a way to get Marie out of there so that she could dig around for the cookie money.

“It’ll take me a minute,” Marie said. “I know I’ve got some samples and things around here if I can just figure out which box they’re in. I’ll be right back.”

A towel around her shoulders, Lettie tiptoed over to watch Marie go down the short hall to a bedroom. From what Lettie could see, it wasn’t set up as anything, though. It was just a room filled with cardboard boxes. Marie went to a stack and pushed a few of the boxes around, obviously trying to read the words that had been scribbled in marker on the sides.

Quickly, Lettie decided to search the kitchen. As quietly as possible, she opened each of the drawers, looking for the money. There was a metal tin in one drawer, but when she pried it open, she saw that it held only buttons. She put it back and kept looking. Finally, she came to Marie’s purse on the counter, and she paused.

“You need some help in there?” she called.

“No, I’m okay,” Marie called back. “I found the right box. Now I just have to get it open.”

Lettie grabbed the purse and looked inside, but there were only a few dollars in her wallet. She had just set it back on the counter when Marie breezed into the room.

“This is gonna take a knife,” she said, oblivious, going to a kitchen drawer.

“You sure you don’t need help?”

“Nah. I’ve almost got it.”

Knife in hand, Marie went back down the hall. Lettie seized the moment to search the living room, but it didn’t take long. There were only two drawers, one on each end table, and they were both empty. The pretty container on the mantle held matchsticks. The cookies themselves were all neatly boxed up in cases.

So where was the money?

“Wanna buy some Girl Scout cookies?” Marie asked, smiling, coming back up the hall with a pink plastic case.

“I-I was just looking at the different kinds,” Lettie said, trying not to look startled. “They make so many now.”

“Besides the Thin Mints, my favorite are the Lemon Cookies. And they’re reduced fat too.”

Lettie had an idea. Perhaps if she bought a box of cookies, she could watch where Marie put the money.

“Actually, lemon sounds good,” Lettie said. “I really would like to buy a box.”

“Oh, you don’t have to buy it. I’ve got a pack going in the cabinet already.”

“No, I insist,” said Lettie. “I like to support the Scouts. How much are they?”

Retrieving her purse, she nearly balked when Marie said they were four dollars a box. Four dollars for that little box of cookies? If she had bought generic at the grocery store, she could have three large packs for that much!

“Here you go,” Lettie said smoothly, pulling out the precious bills.

“Thanks,” Marie said, taking them from her. She held them in her hand for a minute as she set the pink case on the counter and opened it up. Lettie was afraid that Marie was just going to shove the bills in her pocket and her four dollar sacrifice would have been for naught, but then Marie smiled and said, “Be right back. You can just grab the cookies you want from the open case in there.”

Lettie watched her go, past the bedroom with the boxes to a second room at the end of the hall, on the left. That had to be the master bedroom. When she came back out, she no longer had the cash.

The money was somewhere in the back bedroom.

25

C
huck pulled around behind Twinkle Donuts, easily spotting the dumpster and the man hovering nearby. He left the car running as he climbed out with his money. This needed to be short and sweet.

“Nice doing business with you,” the guy said as he traded cash for the small brown bag of pills.

Chuck got back into his car without incident and drove away. At the end of the block, he turned around and doubled back. He wasn’t really finished yet; he’d just wanted to make sure the guy wasn’t a setup or that cops hadn’t been waiting in the bushes. But the scene was clean. The dealer was walking back up the street toward the bar, whistling, hands in his pockets.

“Hey,” Chuck said, rolling down the window as he pulled alongside the guy. “I need two more things.”

The guy looked at him tiredly, obviously waiting to hear one of the usual requests: a girl, a gun, maybe a guy.

“A gun,” Chuck said, “maybe a thirty-eight.”

“No problem.”

“I also need Play-Doh or something similar,” Chuck said. “Maybe a pineapple. At the very least, some detonation cord. Can you hook me up?”

The guy sucked in a breath between stained teeth.

“I don’t get asked for that every day.”

“I need it by tomorrow morning. I can pay for the rush.”

He took a few more steps before responding.

“I’ll see what I can do. You got some way I can get in touch? Cell phone or something?”

Chuck gave him the number and then drove away. He realized that he was feeling a definite buzz from the Scotch. Trying not to weave on the road, Chuck found his way back to the Palace. Not surprisingly, Lettie’s room was dark.

Chuck grabbed his things and went inside, swallowing four of the pills without benefit of water before he even sat down. Through the wall, he could hear the pounding of rock music, and he banged a few times, yelling at them to turn it down. He’d waited three years for some peace and quiet. He sure didn’t need to have that noise now.

Chuck stripped down to T-shirt and shorts before grabbing the bottle of Scotch he had taken earlier from Mickey’s and settling down on the bed. After tearing things up earlier, the room was a mess. He didn’t care. He reached for the remote and clicked on the TV and waited for the pills to kick in.

He didn’t know if Lettie would be coming or not. Somehow, he thought not. Still, he’d be there if she did. In the meantime, he pulled Jo Tulip’s address book from his pocket and flipped through it, trying to decide which of her acquaintances he was going to blow up.

As he read the names, it didn’t take long for Chuck to spot the real connection between Jo Tulip and the missing money. As he stared at the startling entry in her address book, he wasn’t even sure what it meant.

All he knew was that Miss Tulip wasn’t nearly as innocent in this as she seemed. Obviously, she was in cahoots with his biggest enemy.

“You’re so lucky,” Marie was saying as she applied shadow to Lettie’s eyelids. “Your skin is flawless.”

“Thank you,” Lettie replied. Certainly, no one had ever told her that before.

For the last twenty minutes, as Marie worked on fixing up Lettie’s face, Marie had run a nearly nonstop commentary on all things girly. Lettie knew she was just trying to make conversation, but she still couldn’t shake the weirdness of the moment. While Marie talked about the local mall and the best places to buy this and that, Lettie couldn’t help but wonder what Marie would do if she revealed any of the real truths about herself.

I’m married
.

My husband is an abuser and an ex-convict
.

I work as an identity thief for a man who has ties to the mafia
.

I
’
m here to rob you blind, and then I
’
m on the next plane out
.

Somehow, Lettie didn’t think any of it would go over too well.

When Marie finished with the makeup, she wouldn’t let Lettie peek in a mirror. Lettie didn’t mind. She didn’t care if she looked good or not; she just wanted to look different.

They still had ten minutes to kill while they waited for the timer to go off, so while Marie chatted amiably, Lettie retrieved some foil squares from her purse and began to make a mother duck and several baby ducklings. That had been her original impression, and the way Marie was taking care of her now only reinforced that image. When Lettie was finished, she set the ducks all in a row on the counter and then shyly smiled.

“This is for you,” Lettie said.

Marie did a double take.

“I thought you were just rolling that foil into trash!” she exclaimed. “But it’s a duck! And her babies! Look at the tail feathers! That’s amazing!”

In that enthusiastic way she had, Marie was going overboard with praise, though her words seemed genuine. She asked if Lettie could do anything besides a duck, and within a matter of minutes, she had pulled out her own box of foil and was having Lettie make a different animal for each girl in her Scout troop. Lettie thought it ironic that while she would be stealing all of their cookie money, at least she’d been leaving some foil trinkets behind. Not exactly a fair trade, she knew.

She paused when the timer dinged on the counter. Lettie’s hair was ready. They tried to wash the dye out at the sink, but it was too messy, especially since they were trying to keep from ruining the makeup. Finally, Marie led Lettie down the hall to her bedroom.

“You can kneel down over my tub,” Marie said. “It has one of those removable shower heads. That should be a lot easier.”

Marie put some towels on the floor for Lettie to kneel on, but then she disappeared as Lettie worked with the water to get the dye out.

When Marie came back, she had a different tube of goop, which she worked into Lettie’s hair.

“That has to sit on there for three minutes, and then you can rinse,” Marie said. “Once we’re done with your hair—I hope you don’t mind—but I’ve laid out an outfit on my bed that I want you to try on. It’ll probably be too big through the chest and shoulders, but otherwise I think it’ll fit. I want to see how you look with a fitted waist rather than the loose style you usually wear.”

“Thank you so much,” Lettie said enthusiastically. “I can’t ever thank you enough.”

Especially for leaving me alone in the room I need to search
.

“I just can’t wait to see the finished product,” Marie beamed. “Girlfriend, you are going to be a knockout!”