Blown To Pieces (PTO Murder Club Mystery Book 2) (20 page)

More duct tape ripped.

“You’ve spoken to her. Now I want the gold. No police. I see a cop and I kill her. I see Daman or his butler and I kill her.” Mike Tyson was all seriousness.

“I understand,” I choked out.

“Is she okay?” Monica stage-whispered.

“Is who okay?” It was Landon.

“Um...a friend of ours. She...um...had an accident.” Monica was off her game.

“Okay. Can I go down the slide again?” Landon looked from his mother to me and back to his mother.

Kids were so great—oblivious to the world around them...or at least, I hoped.

Monica pulled him in for a quick hug and then released him. “Sure, baby.”

He run-walked to the bank of elevators to take one to the fifth floor.

Monica turned back to me. “What do we do?”

“We have to find the gold, but I don’t know where to start, and I don’t think we can leave the boys here alone.” They wouldn’t be alone, but they weren’t at home, and we really didn’t know these people that well. If Daman had been here...sure, but he wasn’t.

“I’ll call my mom. I’m sure she’s had enough of her sister by now. Between Magdalena and my mother, the boys won’t get away with a thing.”

An hour later, we stood on Haley’s front doorstep and rang the doorbell.

“What do we tell them?” I was on the verge of freaking out, but Monica was so calm.

“Just watch me work.” Monica plastered a smile on her face. “I’ve got this.”

The front door opened, and Gerlinda, Haley’s housekeeper, stood there looking like she was five seconds away from a mental breakdown. Usually, her black hair was in a tidy ponytail at the back of her head, but now stray hairs sprung out everywhere. It looked like she’d used her own head to scrub the floors. Her brown eyes were crazy. “Did you find her?”

“Yes.” Monica’s mouth didn’t even move. She just kept on smiling. “She’s staying with a sick friend. Her cell died, and she couldn’t call.”

Gerlinda’s whole body sagged in relief. “Thank the Lord.” She made the sign of the cross and appeared to be thanking the Lord.

I jumped in. “She asked us to grab a few things for her. She should be home tomorrow.” I might be on the verge of freaking out, but I could lie with the best of them.

“Come in.” Gerlinda moved aside. “Do you need any help?”

“No. She told us what she needed.” I pulled the housekeeper in for a hug. Since I’m not much of a hugger and neither was she, it was clunky. I stepped back. “Haley’s sorry to have worried you.”

We hurried up the Greek Revival staircase—Haley had told me that it was Greek Revival, even though I had no idea what that meant—to the master bedroom.

I closed and locked the door. “Where would she have hidden the gold?”

“Here. She’s not that sneaky, and it’s a lot of gold.” Monica went straight to the huge master closet.

Haley’s master closet looked like an upscale boutique and was the size of my entire house. Rows upon rows of glass-fronted built-ins housed her shoes and purses. A waist-high cabinet ran down the middle of the room. It held nothing but jewelry.

I started with the shoe cabinet closest to me, while Monica started on the opposite side so that we could meet in the middle. I picked up a pair of red-patent-leather Chanel heels and tossed them on top of the Chanel black flats next to them. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the size on the inside lip of the patent leathers. It was an eight.

“That’s so weird. Why would Haley have size-eight shoes when she wears a nine like me?” Not that it was relevant, but that question needed answering.

“She doesn’t wear an eight. She wears a six like me.” Monica shoved purses over, looking for some hidden safe or door.

“I’m telling you, she wears a nine. She gives me all of her old shoes.” In fact, all of my “good shoes” were her castoffs.

“Me too...only, the shoes she gives me are sixes.” Monica stopped what she was doing and looked at me. “So she’s buying shoes she knows we would like but can’t afford and giving them to us in a trash bag she swears is headed for Lakeside Thrift?”

“Yep.” My eyes filled with tears. “That’s exactly what she’s doing.”

And that was the true Haley—giving to a fault, loyal no matter what, and duct-taped to a chair, waiting for us to save her life.

I swiped angrily at the tears. I’m not much of a crier unless I’m in serious physical pain or I have PMS or my best friend has been kidnapped.

Monica pulled me into a one-armed hug. “I feel the same way. She’s who I’d want to be if I suddenly gave up being a snotty bitch.”

“Me too.” The tears came faster. I looked around for some tissues but couldn’t find any, so I used the hem of my black T-shirt and then wiped my hands on the thighs of my jeans.

“Don’t worry. We’ll find the gold. Haley’s not exactly a criminal mastermind.” Monica let me go and went back to knocking on the back of the last cabinet that held purses.

An hour later, we’d opened every single drawer, looked in every single purse, and checked behind every single shoe. No hidden safe, no hidden compartments, and no hidden gold.

Monica and I ascended the spiral staircase in the middle of the closet that led up to Haley’s clothes. We searched behind the clothes, looked for compartments in the floor, and even ran our hands along the wall, looking for anyplace that Haley could have hidden the gold.

I took two bottles of water out of the mini-fridge next to Haley’s makeup chair. “It has to be here. Where else could she have hidden it?”

I handed Monica a water.

“I thought for sure the gold would be here.” Monica sat down in the hair salon/makeup chair and sipped her water. “Haley’s not that devious.”

“Could it be somewhere else in the house?” I racked my brain for where Haley could have hidden the gold. “Doesn’t she have a home office?”

That’s right, I remembered seeing it a couple of years ago.

“Yes.” Monica stood, ready to scour the office.

I grabbed a couple of dresses and some shoes.

Monica’s eyebrows went up.

“These are for Haley, who needs a change of clothes to help a sick friend.” I shrugged and then looked down at what I’d grabbed. She probably didn’t need a black sequin cocktail dress or a red silk jumpsuit. “Right.”

“I saw some jeans and T-shirts. I’ll get them.” Monica opened a few drawers and finally found what she was looking for. She pulled out two pair of jeans and three silk tees. She stuffed them into a small purple Louis Vuitton suitcase. “Done.”

We took the suitcase and went downstairs to Haley’s office.

Monica closed the door behind us.

“Let’s check behind the paintings first. Isn’t that where rich people hide their safes?” Monica moved aside a pretty landscape of a sunset over a field of bluebonnets.

I pulled a sunset-over-the-ocean painting back from the wall and only found wall.

We looked behind all of the framed photos of family and friends—nothing.

“Maybe a floor safe?” I got down on my hands and knees and felt around—just wood floor.

Monica sat in the desk chair and opened all of the drawers. She shook her head. “I don’t get it. Haley’s like Snow White. It should have taken us all of ten seconds to find where she hid the gold.

“Maybe Daniel’s home office?” I sounded more hopeful than convinced.

“We can certainly look, but I don’t think so. Wouldn’t he notice lots of gold hidden in his office?”

“Yes.” We were running out of time and places to look.

There was a knock at the door, and then Gerlinda opened it and walked in carrying a tray with two plates of steak, mashed potatoes, and green beans.

“I had Pierre make some dinner for you in case you two haven’t eaten.” She set the tray on Haley’s desk.

My stomach growled. “Thank you so much.”

Gerlinda studied my face, and then she took a deep breath. “Ms. Haley isn’t staying with a sick friend, is she?”

I didn’t know what to say.

“No, she’s in trouble and we’re trying to help her.” Monica put her arm around Gerlinda’s shoulders. “You can’t tell anyone, or she’ll get into more trouble.”

Gerlinda nodded. “To get to this country, I paid a coyote named Javier to bring me in from Mexico. I didn’t understand that the money I’d paid up front only covered half. I was working off the other half cleaning office buildings at night and working double shifts at a dry cleaner during the day. I was so exhausted one day that I collapsed. Ms. Haley was in the dry cleaner picking up her cleaning. She took me to the hospital and stayed with me. When Javier’s men showed up to find out why I wasn’t at work, Ms. Haley paid them off and brought me home with her. Then she sponsored me for citizenship and brought my family over. I owe her everything.”

“I had no idea.” Monica pulled her into a hug. She looked at me.

I nodded.

“Haley was kidnapped. In order to get her back, we have to give the kidnapper something that we found a couple of weeks ago. Haley hid it for us, and now we need it back.” Monica pantomimed the dimensions of the safety deposit box. “Do you have any idea where she would have hidden something this big?”

“There are two safes in the house—one in Mr. Daniel’s office and the other in Ms. Haley’s closet. After you eat, I’ll show them to you.” Gerlinda made the eating part sound nonnegotiable. If she couldn’t take care of Haley, she’d take care of her best friends.

“We looked in her closet, but we couldn’t find anything.” I was beginning to see that Haley was sneakier than we’d thought.

“There’s a hidden door next to the bathtub.” Gerlinda unloaded the tray and set one plate in front of Monica and one in front of me.

Monica and I scarfed down the steak and veggies, and then we followed Gerlinda upstairs. We walked through Haley’s closet and into the bathroom. What had looked like ordinary tile was actually a door to a hidden room. It was about four foot by four foot and held a huge safe. The safe was the type that Jesse James might have robbed in the Wild West.

Gerlinda spun the dial and opened the heavy door. Black-velvet-lined cubbies held rows and rows of jewelry.

There was plenty of gold, but only the jewelry kind. No gold coins.

We were so screwed.

As the sun rose over Lakeside, Monica and I sat in the McDonald’s parking lot eating sausage egg biscuits and tried to figure out what to do next. We’d spent the night taking Molly Miars’s house apart in the hopes that either she’d had more gold stashed there or Haley had hidden it there.

All we’d found was twenty bucks and a vibrator.

The twenty was paying for our wonderful breakfast, and we’d left the vibrator.

“I feel like there’s something we’re missing.” I wiped my face with my napkin.

“Yeah, like the gold.” Monica wadded up her sausage wrapper and tossed it back in the McDonald’s sack. She shrugged. “I know what you mean. Haley would have hidden it somewhere obvious, only we can’t figure out Haley’s obvious.”

“Right. When we do find it, we’re going to be all, ‘Crap, that makes perfect sense.’” I hoped. If we didn’t find it...I didn’t want to think about it.

I took a long pull off my McCafé and did some more brain racking. We’d already made a list of all of the charities where Haley volunteered. As soon as they opened, we were hitting every single one.

“When you talked to Haley, what exactly did she say?” Monica guzzled her Diet Coke.

“Something about the owner of Liberace’s desk wanting it back, and go Pirates. Her words were slurred. She sounded drugged.” For her sake, I hoped she’d been drugged with something powerful enough to make her forget that she’d ever been kidnapped.

“What could she mean about the owner of Liberace’s desk? Wouldn’t that be Liberace?” Monica set her Diet Coke back in the cupholder.

“Not necessarily.” I crumpled up my own wrapper and tossed it in the sack. “Big Tommy’s desk at the Chili Parlor would have made Liberace drool. It was huge and gold and tacky as hell.”

“Maybe she was trying to tell you something.” Monica looked like she was trying to work it out in her mind. “Since Big Tommy’s dead, maybe the new owner is the one who kidnapped Haley. I didn’t find a life insurance policy on Big Tommy, but if there was one, I’d guess he’d leave everything to his ex-wives.”

“Makes sense.” Sort of. “But Haley said wants ‘his’ desk back. So she couldn’t have been talking about the wives.” Or, more than likely, Haley had been stoned out of her mind and hadn’t known what she was saying.

“Okay, what if she was talking about whoever owned the desk before Big Tommy?” Monica was grasping at straws, but honestly, we didn’t have anything else to grasp.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It’s something. I guess we can go over to the Chili Parlor and see if we can figure out who owned the desk before Big Tommy.”

It was the longest long shot in the history of long shots, but we didn’t have anything else.

Ten minutes later, we pulled into the Chili Parlor’s parking lot. For a non-chili-lover, I felt like I spent a huge amount of time in this parking lot. I looked away from the huge blue stain on the asphalt and parked next to the door.

My cell buzzed with a text. I pulled my phone out of the cupholder.

It was from Max.
Where are you?

I texted back.
Haley’s sick and Monica and I are taking care of her. Sorry I can’t be there. I love you.

I opened my door. “That was from Max. I told him Haley’s sick and we’re taking care of her. You might want to tell Landon that too.”

“Good call.” Monica pulled out her smartphone and texted her son.

I got the key from the fake rock and opened the front door.

Still smelled like smoky chili, and the same disturbing dead animal heads still looked down on me all glassy-eyed.

“There is a lot of stuff in here.” Monica followed me through the open front door and closed it behind her.

I flicked on the lights and noticed a video camera mounted on the wall above the door. It was mounted backward so that the camera pointed directly at the wall. I stood under it. In the wall there was a hole the size of the lens. So the parking lot was under surveillance from inside the building. That was how Mike Tyson had been able to watch me. I looked around but didn’t see any other cameras. That didn’t mean they weren’t there. This one had been pretty well hidden.