Taken In (13 page)

Charles beamed brightly as if he’d been given a prestigious award. “Thank you, Leona.”

Two minutes later, they were met on the staircase between the first and second floors by Ruffs the corgi and his owner, a woman Tori recognized instantly, even if it didn’t go both ways.

“So which one of you is the one who claims we’ve met?”

Tori stepped forward. “I am. I’m Victoria. From Sweet Briar, South Carolina.”

The woman let her gaze start at the top of Tori’s head and slip slowly down to her toes. “Can’t say that I remember you. We spoke?” Then, sweeping her gaze outward toward Leona and Margaret Louise, she stopped. “Wait. I remember you. You talk funny.”

“I reckon I do.” Margaret Louise leaned forward and stroked the back of the corgi’s head. “So this is Ruffs?”

“At your service.” At the sound of her name, Ruffs wagged her tail with gumption, seemingly diffusing any tension her owner brought to the staircase meeting almost immediately. “So what is it I said that had you buzzing my doorbell?”

Tori closed her eyes briefly, the woman’s past words finding their way to her own mouth. “You said it was only a matter of time before one of those women wised up to John’s ways and exacted revenge.”

“And I was right, wasn’t I?” The woman glanced down at her watch then back up at each of them. “John collected women the way I collect magnets. The difference was that I hang mine on the refrigerator and call it a day. John used those poor, pitiful women to line his wallet.”

“How do you know this?” Tori asked quickly.

“Because he’d tell me about the women he was off to meet whenever I met him outside the building on the way back from walking Ruffs. He’d tell me their first name, where they lived, and invariably, their connection to money—whether it was an impressive job they’d retired from, a wealthy spouse who’d passed on, or in some cases, good breeding.

“In the beginning, I just thought he was simply a ladies’ man, someone who enjoyed the company of women.”

“What changed your mind about that?”

The woman met Victoria’s gaze and held it as she spoke. “Because he never spoke about them with any real interest until that last day. Instead, he went on and on about the things they’d bought him and the various things he was poised to get from them. It made me very glad my dogs have always been enough for me.”

“I take it you’ve seen some of his women along the way?”

“A few here, a few there. Mostly he met them away from here, which was probably by design.” The woman patted her lower leg and Ruffs came running. “The third date usually took place here. A popcorn movie night complete with a showing of
Singing in the Rain
.”

Leona rolled her eyes. “Tell me he didn’t . . .”

“Oh, yes, he did. The ones that made it to that date always left his apartment with this starry-eyed look like he was just the cat’s meow.” The woman pointed over her shoulder to the door marked 2A. “I could hear the movie through the ducts in my apartment but couldn’t ever hear what—if anything—John and his date discussed. Then when the movie was over and I heard his door open upstairs, I’d stand on the other side of my peephole and watch her come down the stairs with the same gaga expression on her face as the woman three days earlier.

“Within twenty-four hours, John would be showing off a new toy—an electronic gadget, a silk tie, Broadway tickets, money, you name it.”

“Money?” Charles clarified. “They’d actually give him money?”

“From what I gather, he was”—the woman used her fingers to simulate air quotes—“short on rent from time to time and they were eager to help.”

Charles made a funny face. “From time to time?”

“Pretty much each month from what I’ve heard around the building.”

“Wow.” Charles scrunched up his nose in disgust. “Where were these women’s friends?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” The woman looked again at her watch but remained where she stood, the pull of her daytime soap opera appearing to lose its standing on her list of priorities. “Most of them seemed to disappear quietly. But others, like this one woman who cried outside the main door night after night for nearly a week, didn’t go quite as quietly. I spoke with her one night and she seemed to know she’d been taken, but still couldn’t wrap her head around the fact she was better off. Eventually, though, she gave up, but not before leaving a stuffed animal on the doorstep and a note saying she’d always remember John fondly and wishing him well in his future relationships.”

“I don’t even know her and I want to smack her,” Leona whispered through clenched teeth before being silenced by Margaret Louise’s wide hand.

“Did any of them ever get
mad
at him?” Tori asked.

“Sometimes, I suppose. But nothing like what happened the night before he was murdered.”

Tori leaned forward in sync with Margaret Louise, Leona, and Charles. “What happened then?”

“I’d just finished preparing Ruffs’s dinner when I heard the pounding. At first, I thought it was the maintenance man hammering a nail into one of my neighbors’ walls. But it didn’t stop. It just got louder and louder and louder.” The woman slowly lowered herself to the closest step and sat down. “Then the yelling started. At first, it was just demands for John to open the door so they could talk. Then, when he didn’t do it, the demands shifted to threats.”

“Threats?” Tori and Charles echoed in unison, swapping glances with each other as they did. “What kind of threats?”

“Bodily ones.” The woman placed Ruffs atop her lap and rested her chin between the dog’s ears. “The man threatened to rip John limb from limb for—”

“It was
a man
?”

At the woman’s nod, Tori begged her to continue.

“He kept saying John would regret his choice, then finally, he turned and bounded down the stairs and straight out of the building.”

“Regret his choice?” Tori repeated.

“I’m just telling you what I heard. The deciphering part is up to you.”

Tori looked at Margaret Louise, who looked at Charles and Leona and then back again. Leona was the first one to finally speak. “Did you happen to see him through your peephole when he passed?”

“I tried to. But his head was down when he went by.”

“Did you catch his hair color? General size? Anything?” Tori inquired.

The woman pulled her head from atop the dog’s long enough to shake it from side to side. “Other than that he wore a hat and seemed fairly tall, I really didn’t see much. He moved fast and the hall was dim on account of a broken bulb that Alex, the maintenance man, finally got around to fixing just last night.”

Tori did a mental run-through of everything the woman had shared thus far, Doug’s face appearing in her thoughts almost instantly. One look at her friends told her they were thinking the same thing. “Did you happen to call the police that night?”

“I almost did, but then he was gone and that was it.” The woman set the dog on the steps beside her body, grabbed hold of the wooden banister, and pulled herself back to her feet. “I did tell them about that night after John was pushed. But since they already had their killer, they didn’t pay it any mind.”

Already had their killer . . .

“Well they should have,” Leona hissed through clenched teeth. “Because they’ve got the wrong person.”

For Tori, there was something about sitting on a park bench beneath a canopy of oak trees in the middle of the busiest city in the world that was almost surreal. It was like two different worlds—one quiet and peaceful and ripe with nature, and the other filled with concrete, skyscrapers, and people as far as the eye could see—had been tossed into one of Margaret Louise’s blenders and mixed together to create a flawless culinary masterpiece.

“I see ’em, I see ’em!” Margaret Louise pushed off the bench and shot her hand into the air, waving it wildly from side to side, but to no avail.

Charles placed his hand on Margaret Louise’s shoulder. “I’ve got this, sugar.” He put two fingers into his mouth and blew, the whistle he created causing more than a few dogs to turn in their direction. Sure enough, Beatrice looked up from whatever deep conversation she was having with Debbie and Rose and looked from side to side. “Woo-hoo! Southern Ladies . . . we’re over here!”

Tori felt the knot of dread in her stomach tighten when the smiles she would have expected from their friends failed to make an appearance. Rising to her feet, she tried to muster one for them instead. “Boy, am I happy to see the three of you!” She took Rose’s upper arm from Debbie and led her the last few steps to the bench. “How was your morning with Dixie?”

Rose slowly lowered herself to the hunter green–painted bench and exhaled. “Dixie is a wreck. She cried almost the whole time, and she’s lost, what”—Rose looked to Debbie and Beatrice for commiseration of her guess—“a good pound or so already, wouldn’t you agree?”

Debbie nodded. “Her face is pasty white and drawn in, like the weight of the world is on her.”

“Because it is,” Rose said before turning to meet Tori’s worried eyes. “Victoria, she can’t stay in there much longer. It’s going to kill her.”

It was hard to comfort someone when you didn’t have a whole lot to offer, but still, she tried. Rose was failing enough on her own—the stress of what was happening to Dixie might be just enough to push her over the edge. “Rose, we’re going to figure this out.”

“That’s what you keep saying, but I’m worried it won’t happen.” Rose twisted the ends of her sweater inside her hands then looked off into the distance, with nothing else to say.

Debbie moved in closer, wrapping an arm across Tori’s shoulder as she did. “So tell us how things went on your end. Any luck finding Caroline Trotter?”

“No. We stopped by again on the way here but no such luck.”

“But after what we learned from John’s downstairs neighbor, tracking down Caroline is probably a waste of time,” Charles gushed. “In fact, if you ask me, I think we can remove her name from the list entirely.”

Beatrice stepped into the makeshift semicircle around Rose’s bench, closing it off from any curious passersby. “We can?”

“John’s neighbor told us about an incident the night before the murder. We think the man she recalls pounding on John’s door could very well be the cupcake lady’s son, Doug.”

“He threatened to tear John limb from limb,” Margaret Louise added triumphantly. “Which is just what I said this mornin’, ain’t it? A good boy could snap if someone hurt his mama.”

Rose re-engaged eye contact, the faintest hint of hope removing some of the darkness from her features. “Is this true, Victoria? Did you get the break we’ve been waiting for?”

More than anything, she wanted to say yes, wanted to ease the worry from Rose and deliver concrete proof to the police that Dixie wasn’t the one who’d murdered John Dreyer. But she couldn’t.

Not yet anyway.

She felt Debbie’s arm tighten around her shoulders as she searched for the best way to answer Rose’s questions without completely annihilating the hope the woman so desperately needed just to hang on and stay positive. “What Charles and Margaret Louise said is true, Rose. A man did pound on John’s apartment door the night before the murder. That man did threaten him, saying John would regret his choice. But whether or not that man was Doug remains to be seen. John’s neighbor didn’t get a clear look at his face, so we’re just hypothesizing at this point.”

“It certainly fits, though.” Charles twisted his lips into a contemplative pout then allowed them to part as he opted to share a thought. “And if it does, Caroline Trotter is a moot point.”

“We can’t rule her out, Charles, even if we can determine the man John’s neighbor heard was, in fact, Doug. To simply write her off is exactly what the cops did when the neighbor told them about this mystery man and they already had Dixie.”

Charles gave Tori an admiring nod that included a glance in Margaret Louise’s direction. “She really is good at this stuff, isn’t she?”

“It’s like I said to you earlier, our Victoria is a modern-day Nancy Drew.”

Rose’s shoulders caved inward, prompting Tori to disengage from Debbie and squat beside Rose. “Hey . . . Rose . . . it’s going to be okay. Somehow, someway, this is going to work out. Dixie is innocent. You know that, I know that, everyone here knows that, and soon, the police will know it, too.”

“I pray you’re right, Victoria, I truly do,” Rose whispered in a voice void of any emotion or strength.

Tori cocked her head upward and peered at her friends, the worry she saw in their eyes surely reflected in her own. But it was Charles who finally spoke, the singsong quality of his voice coupled with his bottomless supply of positive ideas providing the exact reprieve they needed at that moment.

“The six of you need to have a little fun. Something to lift your spirits and help that sunshine right there”—he pointed at the steady ray of light poking its way through the trees above them—“reach your insides, too.”

“How are we supposed to have fun, young man, when our friend is sitting in a jail cell in a strange city for a crime she didn’t commit?”

For a moment, Charles didn’t answer. But just as Tori was beginning to worry that Rose had hurt his feelings, he reached forward, gently took Rose’s hands, and tugged her to her feet, assuming walking-buddy duty with a link of his arm. “You let the sea lions have it for you and just go along for the ride the way I do when someone’s had the audacity to paint my rainbow-colored world in warship gray and dirt brown.”

Leona, Margaret Louise, Beatrice, Debbie, and Tori fell in step behind Rose and Charles as they made their way through the southern section of Central Park to the zoo. Once inside, they secured a spot on the top step that encircled the sea lion pool and waited—along with a trio of eager sea lions—for the arrival of the three trainers tasked with feeding the animals and showcasing their many abilities to the steadily growing crowd.

As they waited, Tori couldn’t help but marvel at the way Charles had won over her friends, his ability to listen and relate making him and his many quirks more than a little endearing.

In a matter of minutes, he managed to make everyone feel special. With Leona, he swapped makeup tips as well as an occasional under-the-breath commentary about its poor application by several zoo goers. With Margaret Louise and Debbie, he shared kitchen success stories and a handful of laugh-worthy disaster tales. With Rose, he shared his list of favorite books, citing several that had given him the courage to be the person he was meant to be. With Beatrice, he hummed a few Kenny Rogers tunes.

Tori watched the various interactions, even smiled at a few of them, but she simply couldn’t seem to find the modicum of peace her friends had managed to seize as they awaited the trainers.

Charles, of course, noticed, scooting his backside closer to Tori as Beatrice turned her attention to her camera and a Bobblehead Kenny–holding Margaret Louise.

“You’re mighty quiet over here, Victoria,” he said by way of a statement, rather than a question. “I know we can’t celebrate Dixie’s freedom just yet, but we’ve found some good leads.”

She knew he was right, knew from past experience that the chips would invariably fall into place if they didn’t give up, but still, she couldn’t shake the nagging sensation that something about Doug wasn’t adding up. Something she couldn’t put a finger on herself, let alone explain to Charles or anyone else.

Instead, she lifted her left hand to shield the sun from her eyes and tried to find comfort in the sweetness of the sleek faces that kept bobbing out of the water in anticipation of the fish they seemed to know was near. “Did you know sea lions are Dixie’s favorite zoo animal?”

“I do now.”

She exhaled a blast of pent-up air from her lungs. “I guess I’m just worried about Dixie more than I want to let on. Rose needs to see me confident, even if I’m every bit as worried as she is.”

A burst of barking rang up from the pool as three uniformed zoo trainers rounded the corner near the penguin house and made their way toward the pool, a large metal bucket in each one’s hand.

Tori leaned forward just enough to see her friends, the momentary glee on their faces bringing a strange mixture of happiness and dread to her chest. Sure, she was glad they were having some much-needed fun even if she knew it would last only as long as the show, but Dixie should be there, too, smiling and enjoying the sweet innocence of her favorite water creatures.

Innocence . . .

She closed her eyes for a moment, only to open them when she felt Charles studying her rather than the sea lions like everyone else. “I’m sorry, Charles,” she whispered through the lump that had formed in her throat. “I’m not trying to be a killjoy. But picturing Dixie in that jail cell is all I can think about right now.”

The lump was followed by a misting in her eyes when his hand closed over hers and squeezed ever so gently. “A friend of a friend is on the force. I’ll give him a ring once we’re done here and ask him to look in on Dixie tonight. Maybe knowing she’s got someone on the inside looking out for her in much the same way she has all of you rallying to her defense here on the outside will make things a little easier. For her . . . and for you.”