Witness Chase (Nick Teffinger Thriller) (6 page)

Then the door slammed.

THE TWO WOMEN STARED AT EACH OTHER.
Then Dannenberg laughed, got up, and headed for the bedroom, turning to say, “You really know how to make an entrance, girl.” In a moment she returned with a plastic bag and some papers, threw them on the table and began rolling a joint. Then she lit it up and took a deep drag, closed here eyes, held it in for as long as she could and blew it out. She said, “Not the best, but doable,” and passed it over to Kelly. She wore cutoff jeans and a white T-shirt and no bra. Her breasts were too perfect to be fake and too perfect to be real.

Kelly took the joint, surprised that she did and, holding it between her index finger and thumb, sucked the smoke in quick and deep. Her lungs rejected it immediately, sending her into a fit of coughing that brought tears to her eyes. Then she breathed deep three times and took another hit, this time not as long or intense, and managed to hold it in. When she finally blew it out Jeannie Dannenberg smiled with approval, and said, “Like riding a bike.”

Kelly felt everything soften.

“Yeah, except I never rode that many bikes.”

Dannenberg grabbed two cans of beer from the fridge, handed one to her, popped the top as she sat back down and asked two very good questions. “So who are you? And what happened to D’endra?”

A cigarette danged in her left hand; if you closed your eyes, you’d swear you were in a bar.

Kelly tipped the bottle and took a long swig, ice cold, the best beer she ever tasted. She looked at the can, Bud Light. Then she twisted her torso, working the pain out of her back.

“I was the woman in the other car at the gas station, the night that Alicia Elmblade was supposedly abducted. I was the one who called 911.”

Dannenberg looked like she was traveling back in time, then said, “That was you?”

“Yes.”

“Well screw me.”

She felt heavy.

“Screw both of us. D’endra Vaughn is dead and somehow it’s because of that night. And whoever killed her is after me . . .”

“What?“

“And if me, then you. That’s why I’m here. To warn you.”

Dannenberg dangled the cigarette near the ashtray, flicked it without looking and threw ash on the table.

“Well talk, woman.”

Ravenfield saw her keys and wallet sitting on the end table, grabbed them, and stuck them back in her purse before she forgot.

She organized her thoughts then said, “This is all hearsay, from the cops, I never met D’endra myself.” With that, she told her what she knew about how D’endra Vaughn had been violently murdered Saturday evening, strung up by her wrists on her back porch, gagged, beaten and cut to death.

“Look,” she said. “Here’s the weird part, and why I’m here. Whoever killed D’endra took her cell phone. On Sunday afternoon, after D’endra was definitely dead, he used it to call me at the law firm. I wasn’t there when he called and he didn’t leave a message. But the connection showed up in D’endra’s cell phone records. The detective in charge, a guy named Nick Teffinger, a lieutenant actually, found out about it and paid me a visit. He thinks that the call was a message from the killer that I’m next. I’m thinking if I’m on this guy’s list, then you probably are too, and you have a right to know about it.”

“Jesus.” She took a deep drag and blew it out her nose. “Poor D’endra.”

Ravenfield’s eyes narrowed.

“My only connection in the world to D’endra Vaughn is from the night at the gas station. Whatever’s going on goes right back to that.”

DANNENBERG STRETCHED HER LEGS
out on the coffee table. Kelly couldn’t help but notice they were just about perfect, firm and smooth. “I’m starting to get a buzz,“ Dannenberg said. “The asshole.”

Neither spoke.

Kelly finally said, “Were you two close, or what? I mean you and D’endra . . .”

Dannenberg rolled the aluminum can in her fingers.

“We were once. We kind of drifted after she turned into a teacher.”

“Mmm . . .”

“Poor D’endra.” She paused, as if recollecting, then said, “She had a charisma, that girl. People just took to her. She was one of those women that guys talk to for the first time and in five minutes they want to buy her a car. She had this hypnotic quality.” She got a look in her eye. “But she was wild, too. I remember one night, when Alley was dancing . . .”

“Alley?”

“Alicia Elmblade.”

“Oh.”

“. . . right, when Alley was stripping down at Cheeks, me and D’endra go down to see her. We start slamming shots, I mean, we’re getting faced, we’re sitting at the bar and guys are buying us drinks and shit. Alley gets up on stage to do a set, and out of the blue D’endra climbs up with her. She starts peeling off her street clothes, all the way down to her panties. The guys are going nuts, I mean, she’s on her back giving crack shots, the whole thing.” She tasted the beer and smiled. “She had the body for it, too. I’ll hand her that. The girl took good care of herself, did aerobics, the whole bit.”

Ravenfield got up, walked over to the window, pulled down a slat in the blind down and looked out. Everything looked the same as before.

Nothing had changed.

Everything looked dark and empty.

No creepy guys were hanging around that she could see.

“What I’m thinking,” she said, “is that if we put our heads together, maybe we can figure out what’s going on. About all I know about the night in question is that your friend was in some kind of trouble and wanted to have her abduction faked so she could disappear. Then . . .”

“Whoa!”

Kelly was confused.

“What?”

“No, no, no.”

“No what?”

“Alley wasn’t in any kind of trouble.”

“She wasn’t?”

“Hell no. Who told you that?”

Michael Northway, she thought, wondering if she should disclose his name or not, then said, “Michael Northway. He’s the one who got me involved in this whole thing in the first place. He’s the one who drove the van.”

Dannenberg lit another cigarette and sucked in.

“I never knew his name,” she said, blowing out smoke with the words. “Who is he, exactly?”

“He’s a lawyer in my firm.”

“A lawyer, huh?” Then, after a drink of beer, Dannenberg said, “Here’s the deal. Alley was living here with me and stripping at Cheeks. One night she comes home, I’m sleeping of course, and she starts jumping up and down on the bed, all excited, waking me up and shit. Some guy had come into the club and offered her a hundred thousand dollars if she’d agree to fake her abduction and then disappear from Denver.”

“Who?”

“I have no idea,” Dannenberg said. “Alley wouldn’t say. But the man was serious, he had the whole thing planned out and she was convinced he had the money.”

“It had to have been Michael Northway.”

Dannenberg looked vacant.

“Makes sense.”

“He has that kind of money.”

She nodded.

“So then what happened?”

“Okay,” Dannenberg continued. “The man wanted a witness or two to be with her when it happened, you know, someone to be there when the abduction took place, to tell the police that they saw an Asian man take her. We were supposed to say Asian, just to keep any heat off him in case the police actually caught up with him or something.”

That was the same explanation Northway had given her.

Dannenberg continued, “Alley told him about me and D’endra as the possible witnesses. We were kind of a Three Musketeers back then. The guy was going to pay us ten thousand each to participate.”

“Did you get paid?”

“In cash, sweetheart, every last penny. So did D’endra.”

“Well, that’s good, at least.”

Dannenberg shrugged.

“It didn’t last long.”

“So, did you know that I was going to be there too?”

“Yeah,” Dannenberg said. “Not you specifically, but Alley told us there’d be a third witness, to give the whole thing even more credibility. She told us that the third witness, you, would tell the cops the same thing as us, namely that she just saw an Asian man abduct someone.”

“So where did Alicia go, after that night?”

“L.A. as far as I know,” Dannenberg said. “That was her plan, anyway.”

“What? You’re not sure?”

“I’d say L.A.”

“What do you mean, you’d
say
L.A.? You don’t know?”

“No.”

That was weird.

“Are you telling me that you never heard from her after that night?”

“No, not really.”

Kelly felt a chill.

“Don’t you find that strange?”

Dannenberg considered it, seemed to tense for a second, then relaxed.

“Not really. She told us ahead of time that the guy was absolutely serious that she had to vanish as if she was actually dead. She said for a hundred thousand dollars he deserved to get what he paid for. It was her intent to actually start a brand new life with a different name and everything. He had it all set up for her in LA. A new name, a driver’s license, everything.”

“What name?”

Dannenberg shrugged.

Kelly got a feeling that she couldn’t shake. “Still, I think if I was her, I’d sneak in at least one little call, just between friends.”

“You sound like she really is dead.”

Kelly stared at her.

“No. I’m sure she’s okay.”

Chapter Six

Day Two - April 17

Tuesday Night

____________

AT ONE POINT IN TEFFINGER’S LIFE,
the oversized country-western bar would have been perfect. The smoke and beer and drunk women reminded him of the getting-laid days. But now, tonight at least, he found the band too loud, the bodies too many, the air too thick and the hour too late. There had to be at least a thousand sweaty people in here circling around. He elbowed his way to the bar, flagged down the bartender with his badge and got pointed to a fat man standing at the end, chatting it up with a couple of guys in the second or third stage of disrepair.

He worked his way over through the bodies.

“Are you the manager?” he questioned, flashing his badge for effect and getting in close enough to be heard over the noise.

The fleshy eyes of the fat man narrowed and Teffinger felt him running through the liquor laws, trying to find the most likely fracture.

“Yes, Jack Lawson.”

He shook his hand, feeling sausage fingers and too much palm. “Relax, Jack Lawson,” he said, “I’m not here to bust you. There’s a guy over there sitting at the bar. You see him?” He pointed. “White shirt, next to the blond talking to that other guy?”

“The one with the long hair?”

“Yeah, the rock star,” Teffinger said. “He’s peeling the bottle.”

“Got him. That means sexual frustration.”

“What does?”

“Peeling the bottle.”

“I thought chewing ice meant that.”

“That too.”

“Figures,” Teffinger said. “I do them both. His name’s Aaron Whitecliff. You could do me a big favor by going over there. Tell him a detective by the name of Teffinger is wandering around in here flashing a picture of him. Tell him I look real mean and serious, like maybe I have a warrant for his arrest, or want to crack in his head, which I do so you won’t be lying. Go ahead and describe me. Say whatever you want, just be sure his knees shake and he heads for the door.”

The fat man smiled, visibly relieved that the problem belonged to someone else.

“That could be arranged.”

WAITING OUTSIDE IN HIS CAR,
with Whitecliff’s red Explorer in line-of-sight, Teffinger made a quick call. “Bochmann, Teffinger. I’m down here at the Grizzly Flower . . . give me a break, I don’t have my hip boots on . . . listen, the manager, a guy by the name of Lawson, is doing a little favor for me . . . overlook something next time you’re in here . . . yeah, something on that scale, not too grand . . . be sure to mention my name, let him know I didn’t blow him off . . .”

Two minutes later Aaron Whitecliff walked out of the bar, looked around, walked over to a red Explorer and slowly pulled out into the night.

Teffinger let him get to 53rd Street then turned on the lights and pulled him over.

Whitecliff already had the window powered down when he walked up to the door.

“License and registration,” Teffinger said, giving the words a rough, no-nonsense edge.

Whitecliff had a flabbergast look.

“Teffinger? What’s going on?”

“To begin, you ran that stop sign,” Teffinger said. “But now I think we have a bigger problem. Have you been drinking?”

“Teffinger, I did not kill my own girlfriend.”