Night of the Living Deb (20 page)

“I want to peek into Brian’s office, though I have to wait until the coast is clear, as it’s the center of attention right now. I have to tell you, Kendricks, the more I think about what Brian was doing on Friday, the more I wonder if whatever he’s caught up in is somehow related to Oleksiy.

Only, I don’t know the connection yet. Give me some time, and I’ll figure it out.”

Time?

It was less than twelve hours until midnight.

I didn’t have much to spare.

I glanced at my mother, reminded of her remarks from hours earlier
: Surely he’s dealt with his share of lowlifes . . . Murderers, killers, rapists, kidnappers, embezzlers, and child molesters. Could be that one of them wasn’t happy with his work.

“So you think this might have to do with the witness list?” I asked, to get it clear in my mind.

“Could be.”

“You think someone on it wanted to hurt Brian?” The words popped out of my mouth before I could censor them. “Why?”

“Maybe not someone on the list, Kendricks.”

Something clicked inside my brain.

A remark one of the cops had made this morning.

“The Oleksiy case involves money laundering, doesn’t it, Allie?” I asked her, thinking of Starsky’s comment that Brian might have taken something that wasn’t his and gotten in over his head.

“It does, yeah.” She added in a whisper, as if afraid someone would overhear, “Let’s just say that it’s a whole different ballgame in this brave new world. With the Patriot Act clamping down on banks, things like gift cards and stolen art are becoming the currency of choice.”

I’m not sure what any of that had to do with Brian, but I had a strong sense he’d gotten himself mixed up in something dangerous.

“What if you’re right about a connection?” I caught my mother’s eye, and she narrowed her brows, listening. “What if Brian starting digging into one of these witnesses’ backgrounds and unearthed some nasty worms?”

“I’m already nosing around in that wormhole, Kendricks.

When things cool down, I’m gonna have a chat with Malone’s secretary.”

“Though it doesn’t make sense, does it?” I ruminated aloud. “I mean, if he uncovered dirt on a witness testifying against Oleksiy, that’d be good for your side, right? So who’d want to kidnap him? The district attorney?” Even I figured that was unlikely.

“Did you say kidnap?”

Had I?

Oh, boy.

“Geez, Allie, I’m not sure what you mean.” Did I want to drag her into this? Was I taking a risk, spilling to Allie?

Though she wasn’t a cop. She was Brian’s colleague, his friend. “Um”—crap, I felt obligated to come clean—“okay,

yes, I said kidnap.”

“Wait a minute, drama queen. Are you telling me someone’s holding Brian hostage?” she jumped on me. “What’s going on? I thought we were in this together. Don’t hold out on me.”

In it together.

How weird did that sound?

Then again, she was already part of this whole sordid mess, and she was the one with the firsthand knowledge about Brian’s work, about this Oleksiy case; she was the one who had a contact at the Dallas P.D. It might not be in Brian’s best interest to shut her out.

So I blabbed.

“I got a ransom demand,” I admitted, “right after Mother and I left the Addison police station.”

“Wait a minute, Annie Oakley. You and Mama Kendricks had a run-in with the Addison P.D.?”

Oops. I hadn’t exactly filled her in on that either, had I?

“It was a big misunderstanding. We’d gone over to Brian’s apartment, after some reporters had been poking around, apparently, so a neighbor phoned the cops—”

“Why were you at Brian’s?”

“Looking for clues.” And finding none, except the birthday card, which was message enough for me. “The police thought I knew where he was.”

“But you don’t, do you?”

For God’s sake.

Et tu, Brutus the Blonde?

“If I knew where he was, do you think I’d be waiting around for his kidnappers to call? You figure I made this whole thing up just for kicks?”

“Hey, tone it down, Kendricks. You don’t have to yell at me.”

I sucked in a breath, tried to keep my cool. Mother traded chairs for one beside me and put her hand on my shoulder, giving a squeeze.

“You don’t think someone’s playing you?” she asked.

“You really believe that Brian’s been kidnapped?”

Tears pricked at the back of my eyelids again, and I fought them hard. I would not crack. There was too much still to do. “I have to believe it, Allie. I have no choice.

They said they’d kill him if I didn’t pay up.”

“How much do they want?”

“Two hundred twelve thousand.”

“
What?
That makes about as much sense as Kinky Friedman in the governor’s mansion.”

Which is exactly what I’d thought, but I figured kidnappers had their quirks, too.

“Why not a million?” she asked. “Or ten mil, while they’re at it?”

“I don’t know, Allie.”
Gee, what was I? The ransom psychic?

“When do they want it?”

“Delivered by midnight tonight,” I informed her, my voice a disturbing croak. “They’re supposed to call again with instructions, so I’m practically sitting on my cell phone.”

“Did you contact the cops?”

“No!” I panicked at the thought. “They said no police or media, or I’ll find pieces of my boyfriend all over Dallas.”

Well, actually, the voice had said “New Dallas,” which was odd, wasn’t it? “Then they told me they won’t waste a bullet. They’ll just sharpen their knife.”

“You’re joking?”

What did she want? The ransom note recorded on CD for her listening pleasure?

“No, I’m not joking, and yes, that’s what they said, and no, I don’t know if it was a man or woman, which is why I’m using the plural, in case you’re planning to sic the grammar police on me.”

“Excuse me for saying so, Kendricks, but those are some crazy-ass kidnappers. Sharpening a knife, saving a bullet, demanding 212,000 bucks from a Highland Park deb who could easily fork over ten times that.”

“Debutante dropout,” I reminded her, feeling irked that she, a lawyer, didn’t have all the facts. “I didn’t go through with it.”

“But you didn’t give up your inheritance, did you?”

I bristled, reminding her, “This isn’t about me, Allie.”

“Isn’t it? You think anyone would’ve wanted to hold Brian for ransom if you weren’t his paramour?”

His paramour?

That was
so
1930s. Sounded like a word my mother would use.

I figured I’d had my quota of Blondie for the day. “If you want to help Brian, then fine, but I don’t need you to make me feel worse,” I snapped, earning a curious look from my mother. “Ringing up Malone’s parents in Missouri was awful enough,” I grumbled. “I’m almost relieved they weren’t home, something about petting and woofing—”

“Their animal-psych retreat,” Allie interrupted, like a chronic Ms. Know It All. “They do it every fall like clockwork.”

“Animal retreat?” Honestly, was it wrong to assume everyone else had gone mad, and I was the last semi-sane person on the planet?

“Malone’s mom and dad are pet psychs.”

“Pet psychics?”

“Psychologists,” she corrected, and there was no kidding in her tone. “They analyze critters, trying to figure out why Fido’s chewing up the husband’s shoes or why Fluffy’s peeing on the Persian rug. Their motto is something like, ‘We’ll show your pets how to heal.’ If they’re off to the boonies for human-canine bonding, they’ll be incommunicado for a while. Probably all for the better,”

she reasoned.

Another bit of Malone’s life I’d been left out of, though Allie seemed as well-versed on the subject of his parents as she was on where he hid his extra house key. Damn her skinny self.

Why hadn’t Brian mentioned his folks were pet psychologists?

Was he too embarrassed to tell me? Or was it just one more thing in his life he’d kept private, like that

journal filled with bad poetry and his affinity for
The Joy of Cooking
?

Man, but it was hard to fathom how such a straitlaced lawyer could have been raised by a pair of dog shrinks.

Though one could say the same about me and Cissy, couldn’t they? As in, how could such a prissy and proper socialite have reared such an etiquette-impaired society refugee?

“Kendricks?” Allie’s voice again derailed my thoughts.

“You might want to use your computer savvy and look into this ransom thing. It sounds too hinky to be real.”

What did she mean “look into this ransom thing”?

“I don’t know what you think I’ll find online,” I told her.

“It’s not like lots of kidnappers are doing blogs, and I don’t know of any Web sites offering advice for dealing with boyfriend snatchers, like what to say when you make the first contact or what kind of tote to stick the cash in.”

“Any reason you’re afraid to do some snooping?” Allie challenged. “You don’t even need to leave the safety of Mama Bird’s nest for that. But handling the kidnappers’ demands . . . girl, that’s not your bag. On the other hand, I’m used to dealing with dirt-bags face-to-face. They’re usually clients,” she said and made it sound like a good thing. “Maybe I should go with you on the drop. I’m cool under pressure.”

“Thanks for the offer”—surprising as it was—“but you can’t, Allie. They want me solo.”

“I could hide in the backseat.”

I glanced at the clock. I’d already been on the phone with her for too long, and I didn’t want to tie up the line, call waiting or not.

“Why don’t you leave the ransom to me, all right? You worry about getting into Brian’s office. Find a copy of that list. See what you can turn up. Maybe you’ll figure out who’s got him, and we can nip this whole thing in the bud.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I’m on it.”

“Great.”

I hung up and set the phone down on the table. My hand was trembling.

“Sweetie? Are you okay?” my mother asked.

“I’m fine.” I made a valiant effort to shoot her a convincing smile; but it was a feeble attempt, and I’m not sure she bought it.

What I wanted to do was lay down my head and cry.

Or throw up.

How was I supposed to feel? To react?

My life had come to resemble the plot of a bad crime novel when you strung all the parts together.

Malone was missing, and the cops believed he was involved in the murder of a stripper found wrapped in plastic in the trunk of his illegally parked car. Like that wasn’t god-awful enough, there was the phone call claiming Brian was being held for ransom, and now I had to worry about delivering the moola by midnight tonight or risk a bloodletting.

To top it off, Malone was under fire at his office for skipping out with documents from an upcoming trial, and the Big Cheese at his firm was holding meetings threatening to oust him if he didn’t show up with said docs pronto.

And I couldn’t call the police, because the detectives assigned to Trayla Trash’s homicide thought I was a liar—or at least a withholder of crucial scoop—plus, the Bad Guys had warned against involving the P.D., so I had to put my faith in my mother’s boyfriend, the Navy veteran and ex-IRS agent, the fellow I’d been resenting this past month for trying to take my father’s place in Cissy’s life,

when just the day before I’d all but vetoed the idea of Stephen taking Mother to Vegas.

Talk about irony.

Funny how plans to rescue a kidnapped boyfriend had changed everything.

Chapter 16

It seemed forever since Stephen had left Mother’s house, and my cell hadn’t rung once since Allie interrupted my lunch date with a cold tuna fish sandwich.

I spent a good hour curled up on the window seat of Mother’s sitting room, staring out the window and doing my best “pathetic girl” routine, my cell in my hip pocket and the birthday card I’d found at Brian’s apartment clutched in my hands.

When Cissy had come looking for me and found me gazing teary-eyed at Malone’s scribbled words, she’d put her hands on her hips and expelled a most disappointed sigh, then insisted I get up off my booty and do something useful.

“You could always help Sandy fold laundry,” she suggested, “because crying isn’t going to solve anything, you realize.”

Of course, she was right.

Acting like a soggy dishrag wouldn’t bring Brian home, no matter how good it felt to mope for a spell.

So I took her advice, vacating the window seat to attempt something constructive.

Instead of laundry, however, I went to my old room and plunked down in front of the ancient Dell that whirred way too noisily when I turned it on.

I clicked on the ISP icon and hooked up to the Net on a dial-up modem that reminded me why God had created DSL, and I waited for the connection, tapping a foot and glancing around me, at my canopied bed, the Madame Alexander dolls seated in rows on the shelves of my bureau, and the neat line of my yellow-spined Nancy Drew books.

Mother had preserved my girlhood digs with museumlike care, keeping things precisely as I’d left them. I’m not sure if it was an indication that, somewhere in her heart, she wished she could keep me a child forever, or if there were just too many rooms in the mansion to worry about converting mine into something else. Like she needed another guest room or den?

It was somehow comforting to return to the house where I’d lived for eighteen years with my parents, until Daddy passed away and I’d gone off to art school, and realize a tiny piece of myself was still here.

Like this ancient computer, which kept giving me the hourglass—the international symbol of hurry up and wait—when I itched to play amateur detective and check out the phrases from the ransom demand, as Allie had prodded. I wasn’t sure if I’d find anything of interest, but everything was worth a shot at this point.

Another few minutes and I was finally online.

I gave my knuckles a crack, pulled up Google and, for kicks, entered the dollar amount of the ransom, because $212,000 sounded odd even to my decidedly odd ears.

First, I spelled the words out, tapped my foot impatiently until relevant pages appeared, though as I scanned them, I realized they weren’t really so relevant. Basically, I hit a dead end.