Night of the Living Deb (26 page)

And then the edifice I’d been seeking appeared on my left.

Violà!

The International House o’ Pancakes.

Complete with blue roof and grimy whitewashed walls.

My pulse cranked into overdrive, and I prayed my mother and Allie would be smart enough not to pull in right behind me, even though it was late and the place looked damned near vacant. Surely, whoever was waiting for me to dump the cash would have some kind of surveillance in place.

For all I knew, the bad guys were inside, peering out a window, or slouched down in one of the three other cars in the lot. Regardless, I felt eyes on me as I searched for the best place to stop. In the process, I spotted the pay phone, from which Señor Kidnapper had made all the calls to my cell.

So what next? How was I supposed to do this?

I gnawed the inside of my cheek, fearing I’d make a fatal misstep.

If anything I did triggered an adverse reaction, I would fail and Malone would be left at the mercy of the knife-wielding nut balls who quoted movie lines and worshipped Paris Hilton.

I couldn’t let myself consider that or I’d panic. I was on the verge of hyperventilating already.

The only thought that filled my mind as I slowly angled around the IHOP’s nearly vacant parking area was:

Where’s the Dumpster?

I peered ahead and spotted a hulking shape behind the building, where a light had gone out, leaving the rear in shadows.

Great.

The thud of my heart filled my ears as I drove the Jeep closer and closer to the giant bin. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to cut the headlamps when I parked, figuring if I did, I wouldn’t be able to see a thing.

I left the lights on and the Jeep running, tugging the satchel from the backseat into my lap.

As I gripped the handles and prepared to get out, worries flooded my brain. What if the dye packs went off too soon? What if the Bad Dudes realized the bills were fakes? What if they ditched the sack with the GPS before we found them? What if nothing went wrong, yet they decided not to let Malone go?

What if Brian turned up as dead as Trayla Trash, aka Betty Wren?

What would I do then?

Stop it, Andy,
I told myself, as it did me no good to keep wondering “what if ” when I had a mission to accomplish.

I looked around as I slid out of the Jeep, but didn’t see a soul. Beyond the noise of my pulse, I could discern the whoosh of cars driving past the restaurant on the busy road that led to the airport.

The stench of garbage hit me smack in the face as I approached the Dumpster, my sneakers shuffling on asphalt, and I wondered where the best place was to leave the bag.

Mr. Mumbles hadn’t told me anything specific, such as “toss it in the bin” or leave it next to the empty syrup carton.

I didn’t want to set it in plain sight of the IHOP, where an employee or patron could spot it. I hadn’t gone through all this trouble just to have some stranger take the booby-trapped loot.

I meant
a nonkidnapping stranger,
of course. So I tucked the bag around the back of the smelly green

receptacle; hidden from prying eyes but surely locatable if one were looking for it.

As I rose from my crouch, I felt motion behind me.

I turned in time to catch sight of a figure in black . . . tried to look at the face but saw only as far up as his neck, as an arm came around my chest and another pressed a cloth hard to my face. I threw up my hands, swinging at him, but mostly hitting air.

I inhaled the most awful smell, something like paint thinner, before I stopped fighting. I vaguely felt my eyes roll up into my head, and the rest of me went limp.

After that . . .

Zilch.

Chapter 19

I smelled Joy.

And I don’t mean happiness or pleasure. The way my head throbbed, I felt a whole lot less

than ecstatic.

The Joy I inhaled was French perfume.

My mother’s scent.

“Wake up, pumpkin. Please, wake up for Mummy.”

When I could finally force my eyelids apart, it was Cissy’s face I blearily focused on, hovering so near above my own it was hard to differentiate between the tip of her nose and the tip of mine.

“Andrea, thank goodness! Darling, can you hear me?

Are you all right?” Her normally smooth as silk drawl ran over itself, fast as the staccato clip of a carpetbagger. “Did you fall? Is anything broken? Should I call an ambulance?”

I managed to squeak out, “Nothing broken.”

At least I didn’t think so.

“Up,” I croaked and felt hands at my back, helping lift my shoulders from the ground, and I heard Stephen’s voice, saying, “That’s right, sit up, good girl.”

Good girl.

Hell’s bells, there it was again.

Good girl, good girl, good girl, good girl.

I shut my eyes as my thoughts came unscrambled, as if my unconscious mind had been waiting for just the right moment to connect all the dots. In this case, post-knockout.

Like clouds abruptly breaking after a storm, allowing shafts of sunlight through, I recalled clear as day where I’d heard those words before, besides my one-sided conversations with the mumbling kidnapper.

I’d seen them uttered on the television at Mother’s.

During the news segment about Trayla’s murder.

I could hear them spoken as vividly as I remembered the face of the woman from whose mouth they had emanated.

She was such a good girl, really, no matter how tough she acted. In some ways, she was like a sister to me.

The brunette barmaid at The Men’s Club.

Lu McCarthy.

“Andy, how many fingers am I holding up?” Cissy asked, and I obediently shifted my attention to the pink-painted fingernails and the glittering diamonds settled below her knuckles; but something more important than her fingers flashed before my eyes.

The man in black.

The dude who’d killed at least a couple of my brain cells with that turpentine-soaked rag he’d held on me.

I’d seen his skin above the collar of his T-shirt.

There were wingtips drawn on his skin, wrapped around

his neck.

The black ink of a tattoo.

One that struck a familiar chord.

It was exactly like the design I’d noticed on Cricket, the burly bartender with the girlie voice, whom Lu had been talking to when Allie and I had dropped into the strip club to ask some questions.

Cricket had mentioned that Brian reminded him of John Cusack in
Say Anything
and Matt Damon in
Good Will Hunting
, which told me that he’d seen Brian that night and could describe the pink shirt he’d been wearing. It also implied he had a thing for celebrity, like someone who’d steal lines from
Ransom
and who’d demand the precise amount that Paris Hilton paid for the return of her stolen puppy.

Lu and Cricket.

Aka the Boob Bar Bonnie and Clyde.

It fit like the kid gloves Mother forced upon me when I was a child at my first afternoon tea.

I’d given them my business card with my cell number, had told them I’d pay good money for any information that would help me locate Brian. They must’ve figured out who I was—maybe even Googled my name, as Stephen had suggested—and decided I was their ticket out of Stripper Land.

If I was so desperate to find Malone that I’d hit The Men’s Club to chat with anyone who’d listen, they had to figure I’d be willing to pay big bucks to get him back in one piece . . . even if they didn’t actually have him. Because how could I have known they were pulling my leg?

I couldn’t.

I’d been an easy mark, willing to jump at whatever carrot was dangled before me.

So who really had Malone, if not the two of them?

Damn, damn, damn.

Think, Andy. Think.

Something else filtered through my aching brain, a comment of Allie’s.

I figure Malone saw something he shouldn’t have, and Oleksiy had no choice but to make our boy disappear.

Allie had been right all along.

The kidnapping was bogus.

If I hadn’t believed it before, I did now, in every way that mattered. I’d been naïve, ignoring any niggling doubts, like Stephen’s questions about proof, because the ransom demand had allowed me to fixate on something tangible that connected me to Brian and made me feel like I had some power to get him back.

Lu and Cricket hadn’t cared that I was frantic about my disappearing beau.

They’d just wanted my money.

The greedy bastards.

It almost made me laugh to think the pile of bills in the satchel was as bogus as their threats to hurt Brian.

I wondered if either of them had any inkling where Malone was, or who’d grabbed him and Trayla as they’d left through the back door of The Men’s Club?

What had Lu really seen that night? She’d said Trayla had fled in just her robe, without finishing her set. What else had she glimpsed? Someone with her besides Brian?

One of Oleksiy’s armed goons?

Maybe Lu had been too scared to spill the truth.

Could be why she’d let them interview her on TV. She wanted to make it clear to Oleksiy and his people that, regardless of her connection to Trayla, she wasn’t about to play ratfink.

I wish I’d known she was in trouble, but she must’ve kept it from me. The last time I saw her, she seemed okay.

That was bull, I realized.

Lu had been doing what frightened folks had done for centuries: covering her ass. I had a pretty strong sense that Trayla had confided in her, maybe even discussed Oleksiy.

I had to find out what Lu really knew.

I gritted my teeth, wanting so badly to squeeze the truth out of Lu McCarthy and her pal Cricket. If they didn’t crack, I’d turn them into the cops for committing fraud and feigning a boyfriend-napping.

It feels off, Kendricks. Someone’s taking advantage of you. Brian’s name has been all over the news. Even that Channel 8 reporter who interviewed your neighbor managed to link you to him. The cops, too. By now, every media outlet in Dallas knows you’re the girlfriend of the dude whose car was found parked at Love Field with a very dead stripper in his trunk. Your so-called kidnappers could be anyone, pretending to have Malone so they can make a quick buck.

If I hadn’t bought Allie’s spiel before, I did now.

Brian’s vanishing act wasn’t a kidnapping, not in the way I’d been imagining.

It had everything to do with the prosecution’s witness list for the Oleksiy Petrenko trial, as Allie had suspected. I figured the money launderer had ordered his boys to snatch Trayla to keep her quiet; only Malone had gotten in the way. If Brian had seen them kill Trayla, it certainly explained why they’d used his car to take her to the airport and why they’d left it there in a no parking zone for the

cops to stumble upon eventually.

Was Petrenko unsure of what to do with him? After

all, Malone was part of his defense team. Did that matter?

Did Oleksiy care a fig, even about his own attorneys?

I had to believe he hadn’t harmed Malone yet, at least not fatally. Something told me that Petrenko would hold onto Brian, maybe until after the trial, because the cops would surely put two and two together if they found his body so soon after Trayla’s.

Wouldn’t they?

“This stinks,” I said, not realizing I’d muttered aloud until I heard my mother say, “Stephen, let’s get her away from this trash receptacle. She should be breathing fresh air, not the smell of refuse.”

“Will do, Cis.”

I hadn’t realized Stephen had gone anywhere until he appeared from behind me, which meant from behind the Dumpster, as I realized I was lying just to the side of the hulking garbage bin.

A vague light from the eaves of the IHOP flickered in my eyes as I tried to take in a deep breath. Maybe it was a blessing that my sinuses were still numbed from whiffing paint thinner, as I could barely differentiate the “smell of refuse” from Mother’s perfume.

“Help me up, please,” I said as Stephen reached beneath my arms to get a grip. “I want to stand.”

There was a slight slur in my voice still, and I could taste the gauzy dryness of my mouth; but I felt more clearheaded by the minute, absolutely positively certain of who the GPS would lead us to and wanting to strangle the culprits with my bare hands.

“Geez, Kendricks, you scared the crap out of us.”

As Stephen assisted me from the ground to my feet, I realized he and Cissy weren’t the only ones who’d dropped by the Dumpster to retrieve me.

The Blond Menace had shown up as well.

Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,
I thought as I swallowed hard to rinse the taste of the paint thinner from my mouth.

“What the heck happened to you?” Allie grilled me like a witness on the stand. “I wasn’t but a minute behind you—”

“As was I,” my mother butted in, not to be left out.

Allie cleared her throat. “When I pulled into the parking lot, I saw your car with its lights on, then I spot you flat on your back. What did you do? Run into something?”

What did I do?

“Thanks, all of you,” I muttered, hearing gravel in my voice, “for your concern and for thinking I couldn’t handle this without a host of Chuck Norris wannabes pretending to be Texas Rangers.”

“You know Chuck wasn’t really a Ranger, don’t you, Kendricks?” said the ever-helpful Allie. “He just played one on TV.”

If I were
really
Chuck Norris, I would’ve given her a high-karate kick and knocked out all her teeth.

“How long was I out?” I asked and looked straight at Stephen, clearly the only sane member of my posse.

“A minute, maybe a little longer than that. I got here pretty quick after you did, Andy, but not fast enough to see who grabbed you,” he said, keeping a steady grip on my shoulder as I wobbled a bit until I found my sea legs.

“It doesn’t matter,” I told him, doing the best I could to ignore the ache in my head. “I think I know who’s responsible.”

“For kidnapping Mr. Malone?” my mother asked, slipping her hands into the pockets of a black silk jacket. I noticed she wore matching silk pants, even a black silk camisole and black pearls.