Night of the Living Deb (12 page)

Lucci and starring Malone!” Allie screamed in my ear, and I couldn’t tell if she was horrified or excited.

“It’s hard to even fathom that the boys in blue are on the prowl for our man Brian, who, God knows, is about as dangerous as Charlie Brown.”

Brian was a wanted man.

So I’d been dating a “bad boy” after all?

Despite his always saying “please” and “thank you” and “yes, ma’am,” and dressing nicely, showing up on time, and never letting a door close in my face?

Who’d have thunk it?

Allie’s squawking continued: “It’s been all over the airwaves this morning, and the firm’s already fielded so many calls from reporters that the switchboard operator nearly had a nervous breakdown. They had to bring in temps just to handle the overload. It’s worse than when Abramawitz was defending that councilman’s wife who poisoned her philandering husband by putting coolant in

his Gatorade.”

I barely caught her every other word, as I was still digesting the fact that the police were after Brian.

How many women saw their boyfriends’ faces on the morning news, noting that the police were hunting for them, unless they’d dated the Unibomber?

“Oh, boy” didn’t even begin to cover it.

And what the heck did “murder” have to do with Malone?

Other than my own lethal thoughts about him.

Obviously he wasn’t dead if the police needed to chat with him—though if I’d gotten my hands on him last night after his “Dear Jane” call, I would’ve committed assault and battery, at the very least, to say nothing of homicide.

So who’d been iced? And how was Brian involved, other than the red coupe surrounded by crime scene tape zeroed in on by the news chopper looked a lot like his Acura.

Could be lack of sleep, but I suddenly felt dizzy.

If my body had an error message, it would have been blinking, “System Overload.”

I hadn’t read the paper lately, but I was beginning to think my horoscope must’ve had a big warning label that said: Danger! Cosmic Crapping Ahead!

Just wish someone had alerted me that merely breathing these days was bad for my health. I had that sinking feeling again that I should’ve stayed in bed, the covers pulled over my head, ignoring the world entirely. Maybe even through the week ahead, missing my birthday completely, which might not be a bad thing seeing as how I was racing past thirty at an alarming speed, obviously

slated to die alone, from the looks of things.

“Kendricks, hello? Are you still there?” Allie barked.

“Metaphysically? Or literally?” I asked, because there was a difference; but she didn’t seem to care.

“Well, there’s more to all of this, if you’ll pay attention.”

My my, but she was snippy. And I was the one who’d been dumped like a pound of rotten hamburger.

“I’m all ears.”

“Malone is AWOL, girl. He didn’t show up at work this morning, and he didn’t leave any kind of message, not even on anyone’s voice mail. Old Abe isn’t any too happy with him, particularly right after he put us on the Oleksiy case and we’ve got a preliminary hearing on that one in a

matter of weeks. We just started the process of interviewing some newly added prosecution witnesses. Well, Brian did, anyway. I was busy with a depo. He set up a couple

meetings for Friday afternoon, but that’s all I know. Only now Malone’s bailed, and no one can find the list or any notes on his interviews.”

So Brian had bailed on me
and
the firm, when he and Allie were working on a big case, ticking off the Big Cheese, J. D. Abramawitz?

All right, dumping a girlfriend wasn’t nice, but it wasn’t career-ending.

But crapping out on a job he loved right before the start of a trial?

Uh-uh.

No way.

No how.

That was one thing I knew, deep down inside and every which way but loose, that Brian would
never
do.

Every nerve in my body tingled as my emotions flipflopped,

from wanting to kill my missing dude to “Uh-oh, something’s wrong.”

Well, wasn’t it a woman’s prerogative to change her mind (in this case, by the day, if not the hour)?

So I returned to the Land of Denial, bypassing the dutyfree shop altogether and heading straight for the emotionalbaggage claim.

I didn’t care what all the signs pointed to . . . it didn’t matter that Malone himself had called to personally punt our relationship . . . or that Barmaid Lu at The Men’s Club swore she’d seen him leave with Trayla, the pole dancer who purportedly had a ticket to a new life; because something stronger needled at me, reminded me of my daddy’s words about rushing to judgment.

I wouldn’t do it again, not until I fully understood the breadth and scope of recent goings-on and how they concerned Malone.

“Hello, space cadet?” Allie trilled, not sounding thrilled that I kept drifting off during our conversation. “Earth to Andy Kendricks?”

“Here,” I said, adding quickly, “How much trouble is he in, Allie, really? And don’t sugarcoat it.” Like she’d ever do that.

“You recall the hurricane that demolished New Orleans?”

Oh, man.

“That big, huh?”

“Bigger.” Allie paused, but a second later blurted out, “Abramawitz called an emergency board meeting for this afternoon. I think they’re planning to can Malone if he doesn’t turn up and explain himself by, like, yesterday.

He must be thinking with that pea brain in his pants if he’d risk his career at ARGH for hot sex with a

stripper.”

I did a mental delete of that last sentence, my mind so focused on everything else she’d said: the calls to the firm, the emergency board meeting, Brian losing his job. A job he loved intensely.

Oy vey.

I gnawed on my bottom lip, getting a serious knot in my belly; sure that something was controlling Malone’s behaviour besides his own free will.

But what?

Or who?

“I truly don’t think this is about sex with a stripper, Allie,”

I said, though of course I didn’t know what it was about, not yet. “You have to realize by now that all of this is inconsistent with who Brian is. Secondhand stories aside, he just wouldn’t do any of this. His job means everything to him.”

Maybe more than me, or at least as much.

“Wow, Kendricks. I’m amazed at your loyalty. You’re hell-bent on defending the guy, aren’t you?” She sighed, clearly reluctant to concede I might be right, that perhaps Brian wasn’t at fault, just in way over his head. “Let’s table the ‘is Malone a liar’ discussion for now, okay? I’m not sure what I think, but I’m having my doubts. Does that make you feel better?”

I said, “I’ll feel better when Brian’s back.” And not a minute sooner.

“Let’s talk about the news bite, shall we?” Allie was ever so adept at changing the subject. “Did you hear why the cops want to interview our boy Brian?”

“He’s wanted for questioning.” My voice sounded so croaky. “Something to do with a murder,” I said, gnawing on my lip. “That looked like his car, didn’t it, with all the yellow tape around it? Was something in the trunk?”

“Something?” she repeated snidely. “Oh, it was something,

all right.”

I figured whatever the cops wanted from Malone had to do with a murder trial he was involved with at ARGH.

Nothing else seemed logical.

“Have the police talked to you?” I asked. “Does it have to do with some criminal case you guys are working on?”

“Police? Criminal case?” my mother echoed, standing at my elbow. I’d almost forgotten she was there. “What’s goin’ on, Andrea? Are you in trouble again?”

“No, Ms. Scatterbrain, it hasn’t got a thing to do with what we’re working on,” Allie said in that patronizing tone she did so well. “Hello? Pollyanna! Don’t you get it?

Weren’t you listening? Didn’t you hear
why
the cops put out a BOLO on him?”

“Because of a murder,” I said, not for the first time, “but I don’t know whose. One of your clients?”

“What murder? Darling, please, what have I walked into here?” Cissy had removed her cape and gloves and was folding them over the sofa arm, inching near enough to give me a polite jab in the ribs. “Did you kill someone and not tell me about it?”

“No, Mother, I didn’t kill anyone. Not yet.” I waved her off, though she didn’t go far, just across the living room to inspect my work-in-progress. I saw her cock her head, then scratch it, evidently bamboozled by my artistic genius, and I figured that should occupy her for at least a few minutes.

Back to the business at hand.

“It wasn’t a client.” Allie lowered her voice. “Though the victim’s name should ring a bell.”

“Who?” Why did I suddenly wish I’d fortified myself this morning? Like pouring vodka on my Captain Crunch, or spreading Valium on toast?

“Brace yourself,” Allie warned. “I’ll give you the skinny, but I guarantee it’s not going to make you any happier than it did Abramawitz.”

So much for the Surgeon General’s warning,
I thought, and girded myself.

“Here goes,” she said before she started to spill, like the kid who took his finger out of the hole in the dike. The dam overfloweth.

I concentrated on Allie’s voice, blinking as I took in the tale she told, and, Lord, but it was a whopper.

Brian’s red Acura had turned up early that morning in a no-parking zone at Love Field. Since Security these days doesn’t mess around with unattended vehicles in places where they’re not supposed to be, a tow was immediately summoned, and while the car was being hooked up, the trunk sprung. Lo and behold, wrapped up in a plastic tarp tucked over the spare tire was not Malone’s prized Calloway

clubs, but the lifeless body of a young woman.

“A
naked
young woman,” Allie clarified, in case all she’d told me thus far wasn’t enough to give me a stroke.

“Naked,” I murmured, unable to utter a coherent statement while my brain processed the rest.

It had to be a prank, something faked, and I remarked as much, though Allie’s “very naked and very dead” assured me it was real enough.

And she wasn’t done.

“My source at the DPD says the DB is a twenty-twoyear-old exotic dancer well known to the flatfoots downtown.

She’s been arrested for solicitation a time or two, though she’s always made bail,” the Blond Menace informed me in her know-it-all tone. “Robby—I mean, my source—wouldn’t give me her real name, but he did let it slip that she uses the nom de plume of ‘Trayla Trash’ when she dances. Sound familiar?”

Goose bumps rose, rashlike, over my skin.

“How?” I said.

“I was told that her head was bashed in with a golf club.”

“Not a Big Bertha?”

“I don’t know, Kendricks,” Allie snapped. “Putter, driver, does it matter?”

If her head was smashed with Calloway clubs belonging to Brian Malone, well, yes, it did. But I didn’t want to go there.

I swallowed hard, but the lump in my throat was too big to go down. Instead, I felt like I was choking as I repeated for good measure, “Trayla Trash is really dead?”

“You can rest assured she’s not in Vegas with Malone.”

Call me a cold fish, but somehow the idea comforted me, though I was truly sorry she was dead. Dancing half naked for men and ending up stuffed in a trunk: hardly a fairy tale kind of life.

“So Trayla Trash isn’t with Brian,” I said, more to reassure myself than anything.

“No, princess, she’s not hanging with anyone but the Big Guy Upstairs. Or maybe the Dude Down Below.”

“Andrea? What trailer trash are you muttering about and why would you think she was with Mr. Malone?” My mother appeared at my side, and I raised a hand in the universal “hush” sign.

Though she clearly looked annoyed, she obeyed.

And I sorted out the million questions in my head, asking the first one that made the jump to my lips: “Are they sure it’s really her?”

“They’ve taken her to the morgue for a positive ID, of course, but all signs point to her. They’ve got her prints on file, according to Rob—um, my contact—and he sounds sure enough. So, yeah, Kendricks, I think the poor girl’s done her last lap dance,” Allie said, though she wasn’t joking

around.

Neither was I.

“I can’t believe this. None of it makes any sense.” I felt too loopy to stand, and dropped onto the sofa, at which point Mother settled down beside me and put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s too weird to be real. Like a Quentin Tarantino movie.”

“Except Brian’s gonna wish it was only Uma Thurman kicking his ass when he finally surfaces. This is just crazy, way beyond the time when he took me to Disney World because he wanted a tour of those freaky underground tunnels where they haul the trash so no one in the park ever sees a garbage truck,” Allie said and sighed.

Malone took her to a strip club
and
to Disney World?

The things I’d missed.

“You might be right, Kendricks,” the Size Two Terror admitted, and my neck hairs prickled at the realization she was hitching a ride on my bandwagon. “This is so not like Brian that I’m seriously starting to wonder if it’s some kind of setup. That phone call from him. Are you sure he told you he wanted to split? Is that all he got across?

He wasn’t trying to send you an SOS? A secret message, like in code or something? Anything strike you as weird?”

A secret message in code? What did she think we did, communicated with smoke signals? Or pig Latin?

All I could tell her for certain was, “Everything about the call was weird. He was stammering”—I squinted, thinking back—“and, even though we had a horrible connection, he sounded scared, like he wanted to cry.”

“C’mon, we both know Malone doesn’t get weepy,”

Allie remarked, and I despised her all over again, for thinking she knew him better—which was very possibly true—and for believing even for a second that he could do any of the things he was accused of doing. “Think hard, Kendricks,” Allie prodded again, “did he say anything that didn’t make sense?”

“You’re joking, right?”

I’d been with Brian for four months, and he was a lawyer.