Night of the Living Deb (16 page)

Share everything I knew?

Like Brian’s favorite food, which was toasted ravioli; some kind of St. Louis specialty. Or maybe they’d like to hear his favorite color, which I pegged as navy blue, judging from the hue of most of his suits, though I wasn’t a hundred percent on that. Oh, oh, or the unimaginative name he’d given his Acura? Red Car.

Because I had zip to give them regarding his whereabouts.

If I knew where he was, why would I have been snooping around his apartment, with my mother playing palace guard in the hallway?

“Were you aware that Mr. Malone was involved with the murder victim?” Hutch of the blond hair and scraggly mustache asked.

“You’re talking about the stripper from The Men’s Club,

Trayla Trash, right?” I said, earning me a pair of raised eyebrows. “That’s who you found in his trunk, isn’t it?”

I didn’t add that I knew she’d been beaten with a golf club, which may or may not have been a Big Bertha. Like Mother had always said about sequins, sometimes less was plenty.

Hutch cleared his throat and tucked a finger beneath his collar, neck turning ruddy, probably wondering how I knew as much as I did. “Uh, we haven’t released the name of the victim to the public yet, ma’am, and the fact that you’re familiar with one of her known aliases makes me wonder if you haven’t had a little chat with your on-the-lam boyfriend.”

Known aliases?

Not stage names?

Sounded like there was more to Trayla Trash than her skimpy costumes.

“Like I told you, I haven’t chatted with Brian, not since Saturday afternoon, and, for the record, I don’t believe Brian was involved with Ms. Trash, not in the way you imagine,” I said firmly, my cheeks tight and angry, doubtless reflecting the expressions on their similarly unsmiling faces. “He wasn’t dating her or anything.”

“Do you realize his business card was found on her person?”

Hutch pressed me, and I did a double take.

“On her person?” I repeated. “But wasn’t she found buck-naked?”

Was his card stuck in a pocket that wasn’t really a pocket?

Oh, my.

“Seems like you know an awful lot about the crime scene, little lady.” The cop I’d dubbed Hutch obviously relished the role of bad cop. Or “worse cop,” anyway.

“I only know what I saw on TV,” I shot back.

“We’ll be looking into Mr. Malone’s finances,” Hutch continued, “and if we turn up anything that ties him to our victim, he’s up shit creek without a canoe, much less a paddle.”

“Are you suggesting he gave her money? Because he didn’t,” I insisted. “He was paying off his student loans and what he borrowed for the Acura, so there’s no way he could’ve sprung for so much as a tassel of her bimbo attire.”

I nearly bit my tongue in two to keep from snapping at the not-so-nice officers.

“He didn’t pay for her tassels, huh?” Hutch said, and gave Starsky an exaggerated eye roll to the effect of
How stupid are chicks?
without having to utter a word.

I sat on my hands to keep from swinging a fist in his direction.

This was getting me nowhere. I had to calm down. I had a few questions of my own that I wanted answered, and I wasn’t about to let their rude behavior stop me.

“Can you tell me if you found his day runner or his briefcase?” I asked, as benignly as possible. “He might’ve had some documents with him that could help us figure out why he’s missing. They have to do with a case he’s involved in. And what about blood? Did you find any of his in the car? Was there any sign of a struggle?” My voice rose, exposing my fear, and I had plenty to go around.

“Were his keys in the ignition? Was the seat set back or moved up, because then you’d know if he was driving or not, right?”

Again, the police officers shared a communal glance before the cop with dark curls crossed his arms over his chest and dared to address me.

“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.