Night of the Living Deb (32 page)

I’d wager his full attention was focused on the very pretty and very blond Ms. Allie Price and her tight

sweater. . . .

The keys,
I reminded myself.

I crouched beside Stephen, sharing what Lana had told me as I picked Bernard’s pockets until I found a full key ring and palmed it.

“The police’ll be here any minute,” Stephen assured me. “Your mother got worried when your call was cut off.

She came to find me . . . well, after she ran into the other guard and sprayed the fellow in the eyes with her Febreze.

But don’t worry, she’s okay, and I’m sure he’s only temporarily blinded.”

Ah, so it could be used to neutralize a bad guy.

“Where is she?”

“I told her to wait in the car.”

“And you think that’s where she is?”

Hello? When did Cissy Blevins Kendricks ever listen to anyone?

“If she knows what’s good for her, she will be,” he said, and he actually winked.

Bernard took that moment to groan, before Stephen slapped a strip of duct tape over his mouth, and I had a lovely sense of justice being served, in a small sense anyhow.

The rest would be taken care of once the cops showed up on Petrenko’s doorstep.

But I couldn’t wait for them.

Call me antsy.

I crossed the kitchen to the basement door and opened it, just as I detected the wail of sirens in the distance, drawing nearer.

If I’d needed an extra boost of courage, I felt it then, and I descended the well-lit steps into Oleksiy’s wine dungeon, sure of where I was going this time and what I would see.

I went to Lana first, found the key that unlocked her chains and set her free, though she was too weak to do much more than stay put until help arrived. She wept as I told her that would be soon. I could only imagine how happy she’d be to crucify her jerk-off husband after this.

My fingers trembled as I shifted through the ring for the key to undo the padlock on the door in the cellar’s rear.

When I pulled the latch off and pushed wide the heavy wood, my heart zigzagged as I smelled something very familiar:

the scent of citrus-tinged cologne mixed with sweat.

Malone was there.

He was lying on a flimsy mattress, between racks of what I assumed were Petrenko’s most priceless bottles of
vino
. Dusty old things that leant a musky odor to the cramped room.

“Malone, oh, God.” His name slipped from my lips as I flew the few steps between us and knelt beside him, weeping with joy as I pressed my cheek against his, saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” over and over again, as he breathed guttural breaths, like someone in a deep sleep.

I drew away and looked him over, making sure he was all in one piece, noting with dismay the torn state of his pink shirt, the bruises at his jaw, and his unshaven cheeks. One eye was puffy and purple. His glasses were missing.

His feet were bare and filthy.

My God, what had they done to him?

He had empty water bottles around him, as well as one

still half full. It looked as cloudy as Lana’s.

“Oh, Brian,” I said, and I buried my head in his shoulder, feeling such relief that it made me dizzy. I ran a hand over his rumpled hair, and his eyes fluttered against my cheek.

“Andy?” he murmured.

“Yeah, baby?” I looked into his face, saw his dilated pupils try to focus on me.

“I had the strangest dream.”

“I had it, too, but it’s over now,” I told him. “The nightmare’s ended.” I pressed my lips against his forehead, holding him close.

No more fake ransoms, no more strippers, no more worries about whether my heart had been broken to bits.

From this moment forth, life would be a piece of cake.

And I would savor every morsel of it.

Epilogue

Thankfully, Brian and I had a few days to rest and recover before we had to face another

gauntlet.

My birthday dinner at Cissy’s.

Which meant no torn jeans, no ponytails, no whining about the birthday cake, even if it was some kind of froufrou mousse soufflé.

Though I didn’t feel much like complaining about anything these days, not after I’d had the fright of my life and realized how much I could have lost and how easily, before I’d even had the chance to grasp how much I cared about Malone.

I’d learned more about my beau in one night of living hell than I had in the four months before it.

It was way too easy to take someone for granted, wasn’t it? I had vowed, after surviving such a scare, that I would never do that again.

And I wouldn’t.

Which meant enjoying Mother’s catered celebration to honor my turning thirty-one, even if it killed me. Cissy had invited twenty of my nearest and dearest, which translated mostly into
her
nearest and dearest, though I knew my old pal Janet Graham would be there. Janet had already phoned, after she’d caught wind of the “Petrenko Stinko,” as the media had taken to calling it. Janet was dying

to do a piece for the Society pages she edited for the
Park Cities Press
and wanted an exclusive. She already had a headline for it:
night of the living deb
.

As tight as we were, I’d declined.

Brian and I had been through enough already, and I honestly didn’t want to relive the horror of it, not even for the length of an interview.

The Dallas police—namely Starsky and Hutch—had raked poor Malone over the coals as soon as he’d been fit enough to answer their grilling; though they’d ultimately let him off the hook. After Lana Petrenko started talking, no one doubted for a moment that Oleksiy was behind Trayla’s death and Brian’s kidnapping.

I could only imagine what Lana would say on the witness stand. If I were Petrenko, I’d start having my tailor whip up a few custom-made jumpsuits in jailhouse orange.

Call me vengeful, but the thought made me smirk.

“Andy, do I look all right?”

I turned to see Brian standing in the bedroom doorway, wearing the new pair of glasses that Lenscrafters had cranked out for him in an hour flat. He still had a shiner that ringed his right eye and made him look like he’d been in a bar fight. Other than that, he appeared to be the same Malone, and I was eternally grateful for that.

“You’re gorgeous,” I told him, and was about to say something frighteningly mushy when my cell rang, playing that idiotic music until I made it stop.

“Hello?”

“Kendricks? Where the hell are y’all? You’re late, you know.”

I sighed, met Brian’s eyes and mouthed,
Allie
.

“Your mother’s chomping at the bit, and my new Manolos are kind of pinching. So could you hurry up and get a move on?”

Cissy had invited the Blond Menace to my party, and I had made not a single noise of protest. How could I, when she’d been the one who’d done the most to get me through the “missing Malone” mess? She’d smoothed things over at Abramawitz, Reynolds, Goldberg & Hunt, so that Malone had kept his job; in fact, he’d been named “Associate of the Week” after a number of pieces of stolen artwork were found in Petrenko’s possession, and after one of his goons had ’fessed up to disposing of Trayla after the Boss Man had killed her in a rage with Malone’s Big Bertha.

Petrenko had a lot more on his plate now than money laundering, seeing as how he’d been charged with kidnapping, art theft, and murder one.

Brian’s firm was no longer representing the Ukrainian bastard, thank God, as Malone would be testifying at his trial. I planned to have a front row seat, as I didn’t want to miss a lick of the proceedings. If I had never been interested in Brian’s work before, I was now.

But first, another type of trial: dinner at Chez Cissy.

“We’ll be there in twenty,” I told Allie, before I hung up on her, albeit with more affection than malice. Really, I’m sure she felt it, too.

“You ready?” I asked Brian, and he nodded.

“If I can handle being drugged and locked in a wine cellar for two days, I can sit through one of Cissy’s dinner parties.”

“That’s the spirit.”

At least he hadn’t lost his sense of humor.

“But I do feel bad about something,” he told me as I helped him shrug into his jacket. “I had a card all ready for you, but I couldn’t find it. I nearly tossed my place looking, but it wasn’t there.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said and smiled ear-to-ear, meaning every tooth of it. “I don’t need a card when I have you here.”

Hmmm, would lightning strike me, for lying by omission?

Was it wrong not to admit that I’d dug up the Frankenstein greeting card with his scribbled “I love you”

while I was pawing through his things, desperately seeking clues on where he’d disappeared to?

Naw.

What Malone didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

“But at least my birthday gift is intact,” he said as he followed me out of the bedroom. “A whole four days away, in a cozy little cabin in Kennebunkport, Maine.”

Ah, yes, the trip. The surprise penned in red on his calendar.

We’d be gone at the same time Cissy went to Vegas with Stephen.

Talk about perfect timing. I wasn’t going to protest my mother’s trip with her beau, not after what Stephen had done to help me get Brian back. But I didn’t want to have to think about it.

I sighed.

“C’mon, let’s go,” I prodded. “Allie reminded me we’re late.”

I wrapped a pink pashmina around my shoulders (a gift from Lu McCarthy, as it were, which had come with a note thanking me for not having her and Cricket arrested and forgiving me for covering her in red dye, which she was still scrubbing off days later).

I grabbed my purse off the hall table and was reaching for the door when a knock sounded on the other side. I peered through the peephole, seeing a pair of faces, distorted by the fish-eye lens and yet vaguely familiar.

Something told me they weren’t reporters, which was a good thing, as I’d seen enough of them to last a lifetime.

So I pulled the door inward, uttering a civil “Yes?” to the couple standing on my welcome mat.

“Andrea Kendricks?” the woman said, and I realized her blue eyes were very much like Brian’s.

Malone came from behind me. “Mom and Dad?”

Mom and Dad?

My brain went suddenly dead, throwing my pulse into “panic.”

“Allison Price left a message with Pam at the office, said it was urgent, that you were in trouble, and to get down to Dallas ASAP.” The gray-streaked brunette with my boyfriend’s gaze cocked her head like a curious poodle.

“She gave us this address for Andrea, so pleased to meet you, and what a pretty thing”—a smile flickered on her face—“though I’m told you don’t have pets, eh? We’ll have to fix that someday.” Then back to Brian, “We came as soon as we could get away. Are you okay? What happened to your face? Allison’s message said you’d vanished, or some such thing. Were you on a vacation?”

Malone’s father scratched behind his ear but didn’t speak.

Had he picked up bugs on their pet retreat?

I stood numbly as Brian briefly explained he’d had some trouble with a client but that he was fine and we were on our way to my mother’s for a birthday celebration . . . and would they like to come along?

Oh, my,
I thought, imagining what my mother would say when we arrived at the house on Beverly with Mr. and Mrs. Malone in tow. Heck, what would
I
say? Something along the lines of: “Hello, Mummy dearest, meet the parents.

Only watch out for Brian’s dad. He has fleas.”

Oy vey.

Happy Birthday to me.

Acknowledgments

Sometimes being a writer is just too much fun, particularly when you’re doing research that involves a friend driving you around Dallas to bars and a strip club.
Muchas gracias
to Dan Hale, who did exactly that. Any errors are due to literary license, not to a bad guide.

Thanks to Allison Price for lending me her name, occupation, and hair color for Allie Price—okay, and for precipitating that incident at the Chippendales’ show at Harrah’s, which we’ll also call “research.”

My undying gratitude to Ed Spitznagel for allowing me to steal a hilarious haiku he wrote and for putting up with my crazy brain and nutty schedule. I love you!

I’m a fortunate girl to have such an incredible support system, including my editor, Sarah Durand; Danielle Bartlett, ace publicist; Jeremy Cesarec; and the other folks at Avon who work so hard to make my books look great. I couldn’t have better cheerleaders than Andrea Cirillo and Kelly Harms at Jane Rotrosen. Y’all rock! And, last but not least, much love to my family and friends, without whom

I would be orphaned and friendless. You mean the world to me!

About the Author

SUSAN McBRIDE was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and earned a B.S. in journalism at the University of Kansas, graduating with Distinction. Vowing that nothing would get in the way of her “novel” ambitions, she moved to Dallas and worked a variety of odd jobs in order to support her writing endeavors. In addition to writing three previous acclaimed and award-winning Debutante Dropout mysteries—

The Lone Star Lonely Hearts Club, The Good Girl’s Guide to Murder,
and
Blue Blood
—Ms. McBride is the author of three novels in her Maggie Ryan series and co-founder of TheMysteryChicks.com, as well as The Lipstick Chronicles blog online. She currently lives in St. Louis, Missouri, and you can visit her website at
www.susanmcbride.com.

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Praise
for

SUSAN McBRIDE’s

DEBUTANTE DROPOUT MYSTERIES

“Kick off your Manolos and skip the cocktail hour to curl up with Andy Kendricks,

her socialite mother, and her blue blood buddies.”

Nancy Martin

“Ms. McBride knows her territory.She has put together a funny, eccentric bunch