Night of the Living Deb (8 page)

“Kendricks! Snap to!” Allie barked again, pulling me through the doorway with not a little force, as a pair of college-age boys made impatient noises behind us.

Could she blame me for dragging my heels?

Allie smartly held me aside and let the pair in their SMU sweatshirts pay the pretty hostess at the podium.

Beyond, another pair of thick doors awaited us, and I glimpsed the lights and noise within as the back-patting buddies practically skipped their way inside.

Then it was our turn.

“How much?” I asked the overprocessed blonde in the bulging bustier.

When she told me, I balked, but Allie clapped a hand on my shoulder, reminding me to pull myself together.

Before I shelled out the cover charge for each of us, I removed a photo of Malone that I’d tucked in my bag. I passed it over to the hostess, who glanced at me like I was a stalker, or a downtrodden wife looking for a stray husband.

“You’re not a cop, are you?” she asked instead, and a burly bouncer who’d been standing on the sidelines moseyed on over, like things had suddenly gotten interesting.

Allie tensed beside me and shot me a look, like, “What the hell is that about? You want to get us thrown out?”

But I didn’t care.

“No.” I shook my head. “I’m just trying to find my boyfriend. He was here last night with a friend, for a sort of two-man bachelor party, only he didn’t make it home and no one seems to know what happened to him.”

The bouncer glanced at Brian’s picture, the frown on his face unchanged.

Apparently disinterested in my plight, he wandered back toward the double doors.

The hostess sighed. “Sorry.” She passed the photo back.

“Can’t say as I remember the guy. You know how many men pass through here each night?”

I figured it likely even beat the answer to, “How many inches of makeup am I wearing?”

I didn’t want to know.

“If anything comes to mind, maybe you could call me,” I said and fished for a business card in my purse, which I dutifully handed her. “I have money, so I could pay for any information you recall.”

“Money?” The tip of her tongue slid along her lips, and I could tell I’d pushed the “greed” button. “How much?”

“Depends on how helpful you are,” I said while she stared at my card. “Anyway, spread the word around, okay? And thanks for your time,” I told her, though she’d been no help at all.

“Hey, miss . . . um, hostess person.” Allie shouldered her way up to the podium. “You know if Lu’s working?”

she asked the Guardian of the Cover Charge, something I probably should’ve checked on before we’d driven all the way down to this mangy spot on the map.

“Lu McCarthy?” The made-up mask of a face appeared skeptical. “You a friend of hers? Don’t believe I’ve seen you around before.”

“Yeah, we’re friends,” Allie said, faking it like the professional liar she was. “Though I don’t come here much, sorry. Not really into eyeballing the home team.”

“Ah, well, your loss.” The Hostess with the Mostest grinned. “Lu’s around. Her shift’s till closing. Go hang by the bar and you’ll find her fast enough,” she offered, before she ignored us entirely and bestowed a wide grin on a tribe of already inebriated fellows noisily stumbling into the foyer.

“Hop to, Nancy Drew.” Allie took my arm and tugged me toward the double doors, and I felt my heart beating hard enough to jump through my rib cage.

Only the thudding wasn’t all my heart, I realized, as Allie pried open the portal to Stripper World and shoved me in.

Chapter 8

Music assailed my ears, the bass thumping palpably through the air, and I felt its pounding

in my chest, keeping pace with my frantic pulse.

I stood stock-still for a long moment, drinking in the place: the blue lights punctuated by green flashes of laser; the sight of a lone female, working a boa on a brightly lit but tiny stage, completely ignoring the pole. There was a bar to my right, and a raised area to my left where people moved in shadow.

Barmaids in tiny corsets and skimpy skirts sashayed back and forth between the bar and the sea of tables, and ladies (should I call them “ladies”?) with pasties over nipples or flat-out bare-breasted, sauntered this way and that, clearly looking to make a few extra bucks by various and

sundry means.

Across the room, a pale rump raised itself from a tabletop, and a man pantomimed spanking. There were any number of lap dances in progress, and I found myself watching, like a rubbernecker would a car wreck.

Good God, was this really playing out right in front of my eyes?

Could it get any more surreal?

If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve sworn I was on a movie set. Real life—
my
real life—seemed so far removed from this.

So this is what a purportedly high-class strip club looks like,
I reasoned, my brain assimilating what my gaze took in, wishing I could see the fun in it; but the sole description that came to mind was,
Ick
.

No,
Double ick
.

No wonder Gloria Steinem looked so tired. If this was part of what she was fighting, she had no time to sleep.

“Hey.”

I don’t think I blinked until Allie toed me with a pointed pump.

“Yo, Kendricks, let’s make this quick, okay? You’re looking pretty green, and I don’t think it’s the lighting.”

I did feel a bit queasy.

Normally, I’d be the one barging into a situation, using any means necessary to find the answers I was seeking.

Only something was different this time. It was as if a part of me was afraid that the answers might be ones I didn’t want to hear. What if I was in denial and this was the beginning of the end for me and Brian?

I couldn’t bear to consider it.

Thankfully, Allie didn’t wait for me to take the initiative.

Instead, she took the reins and headed straight for the bar. I tagged along behind her, not moving quite so quickly, disconcerted by my anxiety as much as by the barrage of ZZ Top’s “Pearl Necklace” on my eardrums while a redhead—literally, red as the stripes on the flag—shook her booty on the stage. I wondered if her mother had a clue where she was working or what shade of Miss Clairol she was using.

By the time I caught up with her, Allie’s attention had homed in on a brunette in a red bustier, approaching with a tray of empties. As the bartender had stopped ragging the bar to point a finger directly at this particular serving wench, I had a pretty good feeling it was Lu McCarthy.

My insides clenched, and I hovered at Allie’s elbow, waiting as the barmaid sauntered up and plunked her tray atop the ledge.

“I’m on break, Cricket. Be back in ten,” she said to the bartender, loudly enough so he could catch her words over the music.

Cricket?

The guy was as burly as a linebacker, with a shaved head and eyebrows that resembled mating caterpillars. I could even make out a tattoo, or at least the angled tips of a winged critter—I’m guessing a hawk or an eagle as opposed to Big Bird—wrapping around his thick neck.

“Hey, Lu? It is Lu, isn’t it?” I heard Allie say, before I even considered opening my trap. “Any chance my friend and I can chat with you a spell? We’re hoping you can help us.”

The fierce-looking bartender chirped—and I mean
chirped,
which might explain the “Cricket” thing—“Girlfriend, they want to chat with you ’bout that dude you saw leave with Ms. Trash.”

Ms. Trash?
I mused. Man, the folks around here had weird names, but maybe that was part of the ambiance.

Lu looked blank, or else she was doing a damned fine impression of Little Orphan Annie.

“Guy looked a little like John Cusack in his
Say Anything
days, only with glasses,” the bartender added to jog her memory.

I squinted, trying to picture Malone as John Cusack, or the reverse. I didn’t see it. I’d always thought Brian had more of a Tom Hanks “aw shucks” quality.

“With a touch of Matt Damon from
Good Will Hunting
,”

Cricket added. “He had that brainy look to him.”

Okay, I’d give him that.

“Oh, yeah, that dude,” Lu said, apparently recovered from her brush with short-term memory loss. She turned from Cricket and gave me a chin-jerk. “So your man never made it home?”

“No,” I said, squirming in my shoes. “The friend he was here with last night, Matty, said he paid you to go backstage after Malone. He told me you saw him leave with a woman.”

“Yeah, with a girl who works here.” Lu took a long look at me. She had a nice face with large brown eyes and short dark hair. “He really hasn’t turned up since then?”

“No,” I got out, my voice scratchier than a wool sweater. I was still having trouble believing this whole

scenario was real, when it felt anything but.

“So he’s missing, huh?” the suddenly talkative barmaid continued giving me the third degree. “Like that TV show with the FBI guys who’re really hot?”

“Um, I guess, sure.” Except no hot FBI guys were involved in this hunt for Malone, just me and Allie Mc-Squeal. “He’s, um, kind of been out of touch since last night,” I said, and felt that lump in my throat return, though it had never really left, not since I’d talked to Matty.

Lu threw a glance at her pal Cricket before she addressed me again. “Look, hon, I don’t know you, and I’ve got no right to tell you this, but the dude’s obviously a jerk. Maybe you’re better off,” she said and crossed her arms over the swell of breasts that overflowed the tightly

strung corset.

“Yep, he’s a jerk all right,” Allie repeated. “The poor girl’s going out of her mind, wondering what happened to him. He hasn’t even called, for crying out loud.”

Thanks, Dr. Fraud,
but I hadn’t gone out of my mind quite yet. Still, all this drama was doing a fine job of turning my guts into a twisted mess, like funnel cakes at the Texas State Fair. All that was missing was the powdered sugar.

The brunette in the lace-up dominatrix boots glanced over at Cricket as if for reassurance. He shrugged, apparently finding the two of us plenty harmless, and Lu’s face puckered, making a decision.

“Let’s see if Trayla’s in back,” she said. “She’s got half a set to make up tonight sometime, since she took off with your dude before she finished last night. She should be getting dressed”—wait, shouldn’t that be “undressed”? I wanted to say, but didn’t—“though I haven’t seen her yet.

She’s kinda flaky, Trayla is, more into men with dough than the dancing. But if anyone can set you straight, it’s her. Follow me, all right?”

So we did.

I had Brian’s picture in my pocket, which I planned to slide under the nose of this stripper called Trayla—
what the heck kind of name was that, anyway?
—just as soon as we reached a place with better lighting than inside the club, where everything but the stage was dimly lit.

Maybe the guy who took off with G-String Girl wasn’t Malone at all, and it was purely a case of mistaken identity.

A lot of guys in Dallas wore button-down shirts and glasses. Preppy had never gone out of style, not here. Although, if Lu said, “Oh, sorry, I was wrong, that wasn’t him,” it would leave me with even more questions, wouldn’t it? Namely the unresolved biggie of where on God’s green earth
was
Malone?

My mother’s announcement of her trip to Vegas with Stephen was unsettling enough. I definitely didn’t need this on top of everything. If I got any more unwelcome surprises, I’d have to hit the Pepto hard before I went to bed.

I followed on Allie’s heels behind Lu, weaving around the stage, showered in vibrant red lights as a woman peeled off a crimson-feathered brassiere and tossed it to the floor, while she worked what her mama (and, obviously, the plastic surgeon) gave her.

Lu approached what looked like a dim rectangle cut into the wall to the left of the stage, drew the portal open, and the three of us slipped inside.

As the door settled shut with a firm click, I realized the music had faded to a more bearable decibel, though I could still feel the thump of the bass through the walls. It brought back memories of the tiny apartment I’d shared with my friend Molly O’Brien in Chicago during college, when I’d learned to appreciate ear plugs and the whir of a fan when I needed peace and quiet.

Through a narrow hallway we went, doors on either side, some closed and a few cocked open wide enough that I could see girls in front of mirrors, getting dressed—or, rather, undressed—for the stage.

But Lu didn’t stop until she’d reached a room at the farthest end, near a glowing
exit
sign with a fire door heading outside. I noticed a star, cut out of foil, taped to the painted metal with a giant black
T
in the center. It looked like a child had made it. Still, I was impressed the woman had her own dressing room.

“Hey, Ms. Trayla Trash, it’s me. You in there?” Lu called, but didn’t wait for a reply. She put a hand on the knob and pushed.

Trayla Trash? That was her name?

Are you kidding me?

Though, come to think of it, why not? I mean, what better to precede “trash” than “trayla,” and it had a nice redneck ring to it.

I watched Lu go in and Allie after her, before I went inside, nearly bumping into them both as they stood still as statues.

Though I wasn’t sure why.

I’d expected a mess of feather boas and sequins, ittybitty outfits slung over a chair or an old-fashioned hinged screen, but not
this
kind of a mess.

The only chair in the room lay on its side.

A square mirror lit by round bulbs had smudges of makeup all over it. A photo with the edges curled clung to the edge of the frame. Tiny chunks of Scotch tape still glued to the glass told me there’d been more pictures once, though someone had obviously snatched them off.