The Goodbye Body (13 page)

“Madison? Where are you? Are you okay?”

“I can’t tell you where I am. I need to talk to you, but I’m afraid your line’s tapped.”

I took a breath, then said, “Why can’t you tell me where you are? We’ve all been worried sick about you.”

“I just can’t.” Her voice grew more urgent. “Dolly’s in terrible danger, and so are you. I can’t say any more until you’re on a safe line. Go to your bookstore. I’ll try my best to call you there in fifteen minutes.”

“I don’t think it’s wise for me to go the bookstore, Madison. The media might be waiting, and I’ve had quite enough coverage already.”

“Promise me that you’ll go. It’s really, really important!”

“Okay,” I said without enthusiasm. “I should be there in fifteen minutes, but if you don’t call within five minutes, I’m coming back here.”

“I’m so sorry about all this, Ms. Malloy. I wish I could explain.” Instead of doing so, she hung up.

Frowning, I replaced the receiver. The phone line tapped. Madison held prisoner by party or parties unknown. Fifteen minutes. It was likely that Dolly was “in terrible danger,” although I had no theories why. But I had no part in it. I was only a befuddled spectator. Fifteen minutes—and counting. What would happen to Madison after that?

I grabbed my purse and opened the front door. The only recent arrivals in the driveway were a van with the Squeaky Clean logo (a coat of arms created from a mop, a broom, and a ferocious mouse in an apron), and a patrol car. The garage door was criscrossed with yellow tape; all it needed was a bow to resemble a birthday present. A second police car drove up and discharged two plain-clothed detectives, who stared at me before disappearing around the far corner of the garage. I walked quickly to my car, dug the key from the bottom of my purse, and drove away before one of Peter’s growing army of minions could challenge me.

The Book Depot looked forlorn, but my customers were not the sort to gather under the portico and pound on the door to demand their inalienable right to purchase paperbacks. I parked in back and let myself in through the door that opened into the office. Out of habit, I started toward the front room, then froze in the doorway. Everything that had been on the counter or on the shelves beneath it was now strewn on the floor. The racks of fiction had been pushed over, scattering the books like debris in the aftermath of a squall. I spun around and looked more closely at my desk. Drawers had been emptied onto the floor. A stack of folders had been dumped in the metal trash can.

I went behind the desk and picked up the telephone. After ascertaining that it was functioning, I set it on the desk. My immediate instinct was to call Peter, but I did not want to preclude Madison from calling in the next five minutes. And although the police might arrive with sirens shrieking, they were not likely to find any evidence that might lead to the vandal. If indeed this was the work of a vandal, I thought numbly. As far as I could tell, there was no actual damage to the building or its contents, just a hellacious mess that would take a couple of hours to undo. It was possible that some misguided soul had been looking for cash, and then pushed over the racks out of frustration. I’d resisted the impulse on occasion.

The phone rang. I picked up the receiver, but before I could say anything, Madison said, “Ms. Malloy, I was so scared you wouldn’t be there.” She wasn’t whispering, but her voice was low and tainted with the same urgency. “I can only talk for a minute.”

“Where are you, Madison?”

“I can’t tell you. Listen, you’ve got to find Dolly and persuade her to come back to Farberville. She’s the only one who can clear this up. Are you positive she didn’t say anything about where she was going to be? Has she called again?”

“No, she hasn’t called,” I said impatiently, “and I don’t understand why you can’t tell me where you are. If you’re being held hostage, say so. The police are trained to deal with the situation.”

“This isn’t about me, Ms. Malloy—it’s about Dolly. You’re her best friend. Surely she must have said something about other family members or a place she’s always wanted to visit. Did she buy any travel guides lately?”

“The only thing she mentioned was a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary cruise with Bibi. We both know that’s not going to happen.”

“Has anything else come in the mail? A message on the answering machine, maybe?”

“Nothing. You’ve got to tell me what’s going on, Madison. You’re clearly the one who’s in danger right now.”

The only response was a dial tone. I may have looked less than winsome as I replaced the receiver and returned to the doorway, my hands on my hips, to glower at the books and papers on the floor. I was muttering a long and colorful stream of Anglo-Saxon expletives unsuitable for a lady when something smashed against the back of my head with enough fury to send me sprawling facedown on the splintery floor. My exact thoughts at that moment are regrettably lost to posterity.

A hand on my shoulder startled me enough to pull myself out of what felt like an eddy of strobe lights. I tried to move, but an unexpected eruption of pain inside my head paralyzed me. I kept my eyes squeezed tight as I tried to remember where I was and why I seemed to be glued to the floor. Neither explanation was forthcoming.

“Are you okay?” asked a wary male voice.

“Get away from me!”

“Whatever you say.” The hand was removed, and the voice grew a bit more distant. “You going to stay there?”

I concentrated on sorting out the various physical symptoms, all quite unpleasant: head pulsating, elbows hot, face warm and sticky with what I suspected was blood. It would have been overly optimistic to assume the blood was anyone else’s but my own. “Yes,” I growled, “I’m going to stay here.”

“Forever?”

“Am I in game-show hell? Is the next question worth a million dollars?”

“Maybe you should sit up.”

I opened one eye and watched muddy workshoes approach. “Don’t come any closer or I’ll… do something.”

“Why don’t you let me help you up first? It might be easier to do something that way.”

“Stay where you are.” I opened both eyes, then winced as another bolt of pain careened inside my head. I waited until it subsided, then managed to struggle to a sitting position, albeit an ungraceful one. Only then did I look up at what I’d assumed was my assailant. My science fiction hippie gaped back at me. “You did this?” I asked incredulously.

“Trashed the store and hit you on the head? Not me, lady.I believe in nonviolent confrontations, with maybe a little laser swordplay. I just stopped by to get a few more books before I take off to the Buddhist commune over in Lloyd County. I looked through the window and saw you lying on the floor. The back door was open.” He squatted next to me. “You want I should call for an ambulance or something?”

“No, I’m okay. Just help me up.” He obliged and clung to my arm until I was seated on the stool. I touched my face, then sighed as I looked at the bloody smears on my fingertips. “Will you please get me a wet paper towel from the bathroom?”

“You ought to call the cops.”

“I will as soon as I’ve cleaned myself up,” I said. “I have no desire to spend the rest of the day sitting in a chair at the emergency room, waiting for some adolescent resident to determine that I was hit on the head and then try to keep me overnight for observation. If I have a concussion, I’ll topple off the stool in a few minutes. While we wait, I’d appreciate that paper towel. I feel like a Jackson Pollock canvas.”

“Yeah, okay” he mumbled as he went into the office, “but—” There was a pause, and then what sounded like a scuffle. “Who’re you, buddy? Get your hands off me! I’m a third-level apprentice warrior of the Realm of Zaderith!”

“And I’m friggin’ Genghis Khan!” snarled a second male voice.

“Who is it?” I called. I was too bruised and battered to be alarmed, protected as I was by a third-level apprentice warrior of whichever fantasy realm my hippie had adopted. And I doubted the situation could get worse.

“Claire,” said Gary Billings as he came into the front room, “are you okay? What the hell happened? My god, you’re bleeding. Did that maniac do this to you?”

I eyed him with suspicion. “What are you doing here? Didn’t you see the
CLOSED
sign in the window?”

He put his arm around me and gazed down like the slightly constipated male models who grace the covers of romance novels. “Let me take you to the hospital.”

“Don’t even try.” I shrugged off his arm and accepted a dripping paper towel from my hippie. The bump on the back of my head, approximately the size of a Quarter Pounder with cheese, had quit bleeding. I wiped my face and neck, then tossed the noticeably pink towel on the floor. “So what are you doing here?” I asked Gary, who was still hovering and looking more likely to faint than I.

“I saw the mess through the window. The door was locked, so I came around to where you’d parked your car. He”—he gestured at the hippie—”was prowling around the office. Should I restrain him until the police get here?”

“No.” I told the hippie that if he picked up the racks and replaced the books, he could select a couple of paperbacks to take with him on his quest for recalibrated karma. After a brief negotiation, we settled on six and he went to work.

Gary seemed to find the exchange odd, and was watching me for symptoms of incipient delirium (or whatever romance heroines resort to in moments of distress). “You did call the police, didn’t you? This is clearly breaking and entering, vandalism, theft, and bodily assault. He may be destroying evidence.”

“I’m sure he is,” I said as I looked around for the telephone, which had been swept off the counter along with all the files, catalogs, folders, pencils, complimentary bookmarks, and so forth. I finally spotted it and asked Gary to hand it to me. “I’m now going to call the police, if only to satisfy the two of you.”

The hippie came to the counter and leaned forward until I could feel his breath on me. “Too spooky for me,” he whispered. “I’m out of here.”

Before I could respond, he went out the front door, hopped on a bicycle, and wobbled away. No crowd of pedestrians had gathered under the portico to stare and mutter among themselves. I suspected only my bloodied corpse in the window might attract any attention.

I called the police station and asked to speak to Peter. I was, of course, put on hold and regaled with tips to prevent bicycle theft. I was unable to think with my customary lucidity, and idled away the time watching Gary wring his hands. I’d had limited interactions with men who were entirely too attractive for their own good. Peter was the exception, but he had just enough deviations from perfect symmetry to redeem himself. My deceased husband, Carlton, had been compelled to rely on his position in academia to woo his distaff students. Thinking of him brought to mind the poor little man in the freezer rather than soap opera celebrities.

Peter finally came on the line. I shushed Gary, who was in the middle of asking me for the twelfth time if he could do something for me, and told Peter what happened. He didn’t bother to ask why I hadn’t called 911, but instead told me to wait for him. I agreed, adding that if I saw so much as a flashing light on an ambulance, I would be out the back door and down the railroad tracks before he’d unbuckled his seat belt. He hung up, as he is inclined to do when he’s less than pleased with the conversation.

“The police will be here shortly,” I said to Gary, “so you don’t need to stay any longer.”

“I’m not leaving you here by yourself,” he said, looking sharply at the front door. “Are you quite sure that—that peculiar man isn’t responsible? He sounded almost delusional.”

“He’s very delusional, but he wouldn’t hurt me or trash the store. Once he pointed his finger and threatened to cry-otransmogrify me. We were both disappointed when nothing much happened.”

“Then who did this?”

“I don’t know. Did you?”

He shrank back. “Why would I do something like this? I just came by to apologize if I offended you yesterday afternoon. Lucy can be rather forceful, as you must have noticed, and I… well, I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“Apology noted,” I said. “Now run along unless you want to explain all this to the Farberville CID.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

I was getting tired of the sensitive-male thing. “Yes, Gary, I can survive for another forty-five seconds without your masculine presence. Feel free to drop by in a couple of days if you need another bird book. I’ll have to reduce the price on all the damaged stock.”

He dithered for a moment, then left only seconds before Peter and his minions stormed the bookstore like a Mongol horde (sans Genghis). Much ado followed, but none of it was all that interesting.

An hour later, I was seated in Peter’s office. I’d declined coffee and tea, but had accepted a cup of water, a couple of generic aspirin tablets, and primitive first aid for my knees and elbows. I was feeling steadier, although I would not have aced the SATs (or passed the vision test for a driver’s license). Caron and Inez were in the front room, no doubt squawking about the lack of media coverage. An officer had been dispatched to babysit Sara Louise. Squeaky Clean was by now buffing the banisters or whatever they did, but they surely would be gone by noon.

Peter did not seem to appreciate why I’d felt the need to go to the Book Depot to take the second call. I once again pointed out that there’d been no time to sit down and contemplate the most judicious course of action. He rephrased his questions and I rephrased my responses until both of us were reduced to mute glowers.

After several minutes of silence, he sighed and said, “Do you know anything about Dolly that you’ve failed to tell me?”

“Why does everyone think I’m harboring some dark secret? I’ve told you every last blasted detail, including her preferences in books, her kitchen utensils, her window treatments, her wardrobe. She is a very nice, personable, intelligent woman. If she has neuroses, she’s kept them hidden from me. Call the president of the hospital auxiliary, the chairwoman of the arts festival, the director of the battered women’s shelter. She asked me to house-sit and went to Dallas. That’s all I know.”

“Well, she may have gone to Dallas, but she didn’t call you from there,” Peter said. “We traced the call. It came from a cell phone in Atlanta.”

“Atlanta?” I gurgled. “She told me Dallas.”

“That’s what we have at this point. What’s even more interesting is that she didn’t take any flight from the airport. None of the airlines had her on the passenger list.”

I sat up to stare at him. “But Caron took her to the airport.”

“And then she disappeared, as far as we can tell. One desk agent noticed her when she came in, but no one else seems to have seen a middle-aged blond woman wearing a black pantsuit, a red silk scarf, and oversized sunglasses. The car rental companies have no record of anyone who might remotely resemble her. It’s not a large airport.”

“But it’s not a black hole,” I said. “Did you check with the shuttle service?”

Peter gave me a tight smile. “Yes, Claire, even we thought of that. Dolly Goforth found a way to disappear in the Farberville airport and resurface in Atlanta a day later. It sounds like an Alfred Hitchcock plot, doesn’t it?”

“Or H. G. Wells, I suppose.” I took a sip of water and tried to think, although gremlins were still gleefully clogging inside my head. “Did she have a reservation to Dallas?”

“No, and we checked all the airlines. Several unaccompanied women flew that afternoon, but all of them had proper identification.” He leaned back in his chair and gazed at me, as if waiting for an explanation.

The Farberville airport does not compete with LAX or O’Hare in terms of daily flights and passenger nose count. One airline caters to a hub in Memphis, and the other two to a hub in Dallas. Atlanta was a long walk from Farberville.

“You said she called from a cell phone,” I said at last.

“Which is also interesting. The cell phone belongs to Petrolli Mordella. Does that sound familiar?”

“Only if it’s on the menu at an Italian restaurant.” I noted his failure to smile, and added, “No, I’ve never heard the name. Who is he?”

“He’s the man who was in the freezer, but he wasn’t nearly as innocent as a leg of lamb. The federal database politely ignored the shriveled state of his prints and popped up with an album of mug shots. Over the last fifty years, Mordella was arrested for extortion, possession of stolen property, transporting same across state lines, bribery, and intimidation of witnesses during a trial. None of the charges ever led to a conviction. Fifteen years ago he was found guilty of tax evasion and spent two years in a minimum-security federal prison. After that, he never had so much as an unpaid parking ticket.”

“He was a hoodlum?” I said, stunned. “But he looked so ordinary, like somebody you’d chat with while standing in line at a bank. A retired history teacher or insurance agent. An avid stamp collector. Then again, I suppose people like that don’t end up with bullet holes in the forehead. What else do you know about him?”

“We have his last known address, a house number in the Flatbush area of Brooklyn, but that’s about all so far. The department there is sending officers to verify the address and try to locate his next of kin. I expect to hear something in a couple of hours.”

I needed an entire bottle of aspirin to assimilate this, but none was in reach, which was for the best. “So Dolly’s in Atlanta, using a cell phone owned by a criminal from New York City, telling me she’s in Dallas with her sister. In the meantime, the Mordella’s in the morgue at the hospital and—” I stopped, unable to continue the sentence.

Peter did not share my reticence. “The Brooklyn detectives asked for a current photo to show around the neighborhood. As soon as I finished talking to them, I sent one of my men to the hospital to take some facial shots that would be less distorted than the ones we took last night. It seems there’s a problem.”

I stared at him over the rim of my paper cup. “Please don’t tell me the body disappeared.”