With Vics You Get Eggroll (A Mad for Mod Mystery Book 3) (8 page)

TEN

Tex dropped his hands from the steering wheel and suddenly punched it again. The horn sounded a brief blast that startled a couple of pigeons in the middle of the lot.

I put my hand on his arm. “You can’t blame yourself for what’s happening now. You can’t sit here in this car all day and all night and hope to find this guy. It’s not going to happen that way. For starters, you’re probably all kinds of cramped from sitting in here. How long has it been since you got up? How do you—never mind.”

“Public bathroom outside the gas station. I picked the lock. I got out of the car and stretched right as the sun was coming up. I don’t usually get to see the sun rise. Nice time of day. Nobody out here except for me and the crickets.”

“Aren’t you worried the security camera is going to spot you?”

“See the camera up there?” He pointed to the roof of the store. “Not hooked up to anything. After I went in to talk to the Chief, we requested the tape. The manager said the camera is a dummy. Meant to deter people from stealing shopping carts. Once people are out of their store, they don’t care much what anybody does.”

“Even with what’s been happening here? Aren’t they concerned about the safety of their employees?”

“Employees park in a lot in the back. Completely safe. They used to have someone collect the carts every hour but now they stop when the sun goes down and start back up in the morning.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Surveillance.”

“You can’t sit in this Jeep all day staring at the front of a grocery store.”

“There’s not much else I
can
do. Reporters are camped out at my house, going through my trash, talking to my neighbors. I don’t know how long I’m going to get away with sitting here, but it’s my only option.”

“Have you come up with anything? Any leads?”

“Whoever’s doing this knows something about the way the department works. Could be a cop, a former cop, or somebody with a relative on the force.”

“Like Dan Tyler,” I said. “He went out of town this morning and then Cleo was abducted. They just bought a second house here.”

“I’d like to see when they moved here and how it matches up to the abductions.”

“I have that at the studio. Who else?”

“If it’s not a cop, maybe it’s a felon, somebody with a grudge. I’ve been going over past cases in my head and one sticks out.” Tex leaned back. “It was my first case after I went into homicide. I was in the middle of a fifteen-hour shift. We’d been going over evidence for so long that I couldn’t see straight. I went for a walk around the neighborhood to clear my mind. To this day I don’t know why, but this one house caught my attention. Lawn was overgrown, trash was overflowing, and the front door was wide open. I called it in and went to the door to check it out. The place was filthy. Hadn’t been cleaned in weeks. I walked through room by room, looking for whatever it was that set off my radar.

“There was a closet in the middle of the room with a mirror attached to the outside. I heard a scratching sound from inside. I turned the knob and caught the reflection of a guy behind me. He’d been hiding behind the sofa. I turned around and he fired a gun at me. I fired back, four shots. A cat ran out of the closet and startled me. My last shot went cockeyed into the sofa.”

“What happened?”

He was quiet for a moment. “There was a woman behind the sofa with him. We think he was hiding her there. That fourth bullet went through the sofa and killed her.”

“What happened to the guy?”

“We arrested him.”

“He’s off the streets because of you.”

“No, he’s not. The DA couldn’t make a case against him. If he was holding the girl against her will, we’ll never know.”

“What’s his name?”

“Jacob Morris.”

“Is he still in Dallas?”

“Last I checked he moved out of state.” Tex put his hands up and rubbed his face vigorously. “Sometimes I drive past that house as a reminder of her. Looks like any other house out here. I wonder if the people who own it have any idea what happened inside.”

“It’s probably better that they don’t. Do you have any other theories about who’s doing this?”

“Couple of things here and there, but nothing big. I gotta get some sleep so I can focus.”

My thoughts whirled around, potential solutions to Tex’s situation so tangible I didn’t know which way to turn.

“What if I gave you the keys to Thelma Johnson’s house?” I asked.

“You’re asking me to move in with you? Night, I’m flattered.”

“Hardly.” Not counting the abandoned apartment building, there was one other place I could go if I needed to get away from it all. One place that would be available for a few days, at least, as long as Hudson took his time crossing those square states Lyndy had said he was driving through.

“I need to pack a few things tonight, and I’ll leave the key under the Dracaena plant around back. You can come and go as you wish. But if we do this, it comes with conditions. Number one: you don’t ask where I’m staying.”

“I figured you’d be staying at your apartment or at the studio. Now I’m curious. Where are you planning on staying?” he asked. He laced his fingers together and rested them behind his head. For the first time since I’d slid into the car, he smiled.

“Do you not understand the meaning of ‘conditions’? Because you just violated the first one.”

“Go on.”

“Number two: twice a day you check in with me.”

“For what purpose?”

“So we can exchange information. I’ll tell you what I learn from the news, you tell me what you learn from camping out in front of the store.”

“No. I’m not involving you in this.”

“Lieutenant, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m sitting in your car discussing your suspect pool. I already am involved.”

“Don’t you have a TV at Thelma Johnson’s house? Shit, Night, why are we still calling it that?”

“Because of respect.”

He was silent for a few beats while he appeared to consider that. “So, is there a schedule to these check-ins?”

“We can figure that out when we talk. Right now, it’s about an hour past my bedtime and at this rate I’m not going to make it to the pool tomorrow.”

“You really get something from swimming every morning, don’t you?”

“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.” I opened the door and slid out of the seat. “Goodnight, Lieutenant.”

“See ya, Night.”

As I drove to Thelma Johnson’s house, my mind raced with what Tex had told me about Dan Tyler. I understood the anger Tex said Dan had demonstrated at the funeral of his brother. Anybody would be angry. But now that Cleo was missing, was Dan going to turn to the police for help in finding her, or did his distrust of the police department run so deep that he would try to find her on his own?

I called Sgt. Osmond. “Sergeant, has there been any word on Cleo Tyler?”

“Not yet. Still can’t reach the husband, either.”

“Cleo told me he went out of town for a few days. I don’t know when he’s due back. Are you any closer to finding the other missing women?”

“Ma’am, we’re doing what we can. Nobody wants to find those women more than we do, but these phones are ringing off the hook and every phone call that doesn’t give us information takes us away from looking for them.”

I thanked him for his time and hung up.

Tensions were running high—at the police station, at the local businesses, and among the community. The apartment building, Thelma Johnson’s house, and Mad for Mod—none of them felt safe. I packed a turquoise and white vintage Samsonite suitcase like I was packing for a weekend getaway, put Rocky on his leash, and rooted around in the junk drawer in the kitchen until I found two house keys on a small silver ring. The keys belonged to Hudson.

He’d given me the keys before he left town. In case of emergency, he had said. At the time, I’d just inherited the house from Thelma Johnson’s son. I didn’t know how to tell Hudson that the house where I’d been living had previously been owned by the family of the woman he’d been suspected of killing, so I took the keys he offered and tucked them away in a drawer, where they’d stayed until tonight.

The personal drama that had followed Hudson for twenty years had reached a resolution thanks in large part to me. I suspected that he, now freed from his past, was interested in more than a working relationship with me, but my own walls were still up, not ready to let anyone else in. Had I asked him to stay in Lakewood, he might have, but that wouldn’t have been fair.

As hard as it had been to watch him pack up his truck and leave, it would have been selfish to ask him to stay on my account. Offering me his keys told me he still wanted me in his life; taking them showed I wanted to be there. No matter what, I was happy for that connection.

There had been days when I drove past his house with the keys in my pocket. Days when I had slowed down, and even one when I pulled into his driveway. But there was a difference between spending time in his house while he was away and spending time with him. Every time I’d been there, I’d turned around and driven home. Except for the one time I let Rocky relieve himself on the post of Hudson’s mailbox.

I didn’t know how long it would take Tex to determine that he wanted to shower and sleep in a real bed, and I didn’t want to be around when he showed up. As much chemistry as the two of us had together, we were both still very independent people with very different lives, in some ways worlds apart. It would be easier if this temporary setup respected that.

I drove to Hudson’s house. Rocky hung his head out the window and let the passing wind hit his small furry face. There were no cars on the road save for those parked by the local bars, and we arrived quickly. I pulled up to a stretch of curb in front of the house next to his, collected my suitcase and Rocky, and went in through the front door.

Rocky sniffed every inch of the hallway while I felt around for a light switch. I walked into the corner of a long, low coffee table and cursed as it bruised my shin. Before I could stop it, a vase with long cat-o-nine tails tipped over and landed on the floor. I dropped to my hands and knees and felt over the carpet for the scattered sticks. A light came on, blinding me.

“Who’s there?” said a dark chocolate coated in espresso and dipped in cigar smoke voice.

Very slowly I peeked out from behind the coffee table.

On a good day, Hudson was a gentle, artistic soul wrapped in a fitted black T-shirt and faded jeans. Today he was half naked in drawstring waist pajama bottoms. His longish black hair had been shorn into a Mohawk, the top long, the sides starting to grow in.

“Madison? Is that you?” he asked, squinting at me. “What are you doing here?”

“Picking up the cat-o-nine tails.”

“Leave them.”

Slowly, I stood. “Surprise,” I said.

“I can’t imagine a much better surprise than finding you in my house.” His voice was low and gravelly from having been woken up. He stepped closer and I reached up and brushed his longish hair away from his amber eyes.

And then a door opened in the hallway and I heard a soft female voice. “Hudson?” she called. “Can you bring me a glass of water before we go to bed?”

ELEVEN

My hand froze in place and instantly I felt clumsy. I lowered my arm and stepped back. “I should leave,” I said. I looked around for Rocky but he wasn’t there. “I’m leaving. Right now. As soon as I find Rocky.”

“Wait here,” he said. He walked down the hall toward the door that separated the house from the garage. I heard a door shut, then open, then another door shut.

I bent at the waist and called out to Rocky. “Hey—Rocky—where are you?” I whispered. I turned my head to the left and right, looking for traces of his fluffy tail. Not paying attention to where I was walking led me to bump my head on the wall of the dining room. “Ow,” I said to myself.

I straightened up and found myself face-to-face with Mortiboy, Hudson’s black cat. He was lounging across the back of the orange sofa. He stretched one paw out toward me and did whatever it was cats did to make their claws pop out. When he laid his paw on the fabric, his claws got stuck and he twitched his shoulder a few times to try to free himself.

“Hold on, Mortiboy. No need to get all riled up, I’m on my way out.” I lifted his paw and extricated his claws. Once he was freed, he looked up at me and meowed. A ball of white and caramel fluff jumped onto the sofa and swatted Mortiboy’s long black tail. He hissed in Rocky’s face and then jumped down and ran into the dark hallway. Rocky followed.

“Rocky!” I whispered. “Get back here.” I tiptoed around the table and into the hallway.

A door opened and Hudson came out. He’d added a pajama top, and in one arm, he held Rocky. His other hand held that of a young blond girl who hugged a stuffed bunny to her turquoise pajamas.

“Madison Night, meet my niece, Heather. Heather, this is my friend, Madison.”

“Is he your dog?” Heather asked.

“Yes. His name is Rocky.”

“Can he sleep in my room?”

“We were about to leave.”

“Why did you come over if you were going to leave?” she asked. Hudson’s eyebrows raised as if he wanted to hear the answer too.

“I didn’t know Hudson had company.”

The girl looked up at Hudson and curled her bunny under her arm. “Uncle Hudson, can the puppy sleep over?”

“If it’s okay with Madison,” Hudson said.

“Please?” the little girl said to me.

I looked from her face to Hudson’s. “My sister and Heather kept me company on the drive back to Texas. They’re staying for a few days.”

“If you let your dog sleep in the room with me, I promise I’ll be extra quiet,” Heather said. “Mom won’t even know he’s there.”

Hudson let go of the girl’s hand and rested his palm on her shoulder. “Let’s get that glass of water for your mom before Madison and I work this out.”

“Okay,” Heather said.

“I’ll be right back. Stay put,” he said to me. They went to the kitchen where the faucet ran for a few seconds, and then down the hall with Heather leading the way. They stopped by a door on the right and Heather opened the door. Hudson set Rocky down and he went inside. Hudson pulled the door shut behind him but didn’t close it all the way.

“Now we need to find a place for you to sleep,” he said.

“I’ll take the sofa.”

“You could take my bed.” I must have looked shocked, because he quickly added, “And I’ll take the sofa.”

“I should probably be out here in case Rocky acts up.”

“Rocky. Sure.”

I finished cleaning up the spilled cat-o-nine tails and righted the vase on the coffee table. When I went to the kitchen, I found Hudson putting a bottle of wine back into the refrigerator. Two glasses on the counter were half full of a crisp white, and already beads of condensation were running down the outside of each glass.

“You look like you could use this,” he said. He handed me one of the glasses, clinked rims with me, and we both took a sip.

“Come with me,” he said. He opened the sliding glass doors at the back of his house and hooked his index finger around mine, gently pulling me outside. We sat down next to each other on the white rope hammock.

“I read about what happened with your ex-boyfriend,” he said. “Too bad it had to end that way.”

“It’s over. Life goes on.”

We both sipped at our wine. I silently auditioned several different ways to explain why I’d showed up at his house but none of them sounded quite right.

“You didn’t seem all that surprised to find me in your living room,” I finally said.

“I gave you a standing invitation. Just think, if I’d stopped off in El Paso like I originally planned, I might have never known you were here.”

“Lyndy said—”

“Lyndy called you?” He smiled. “I wasn’t sure if he would.”

“He came by the studio this morning.”

“He’s a good guy. He learned carpentry and construction from his father and he taught me. He had two daughters, but they died a few years ago.”

“How come you never told me about him?” I asked.

“There’s a lot I haven’t told you about.”

I wondered for a split second about how much I knew about the people in my life and how much they knew about me. Nasty’s warning about Tex floated through my thoughts again.
He’s not the man you think he is
. Wasn’t that the truth about everyone? That we projected our feelings, intuition, and what we wanted someone to be onto them, only to discover in time that they weren’t who we thought they were.

“Something brought you to my doorstep, Madison,” Hudson said gently. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I drank more than a sip of wine and tipped my head back, appreciating the taste of the sweet cold liquid before I swallowed. How to start?

“Someone has been abducting women around Dallas. So far one woman has been found dead. You might have heard about it on the news.” Hudson nodded once. “Remember Lt. Allen?” I rushed ahead, not wanting to draw attention to the other man in my life. “Whoever’s been doing this has been impersonating him. Using his badge to get women to trust him. He’s on voluntary leave, but the press has been camping out by his house. He needed a place to stay.”

“You gave him yours,” Hudson guessed correctly.

“Because I thought I could stay here.”

“You still can.”

“It’s a little more complicated now.”

“Not to me, it’s not.”

“Lt. Allen came after you for the murder of Thelma Johnson’s daughter,” I reminded him. “I don’t expect you to make any sacrifices on his behalf.”

“Tex was doing his job. We’re good now.”

I turned and looked at his face. He ran his index finger down my cheek.

“Hudson, Lt. Allen and I might be more than friends.”

“If you and Lt. Allen were more than friends, you wouldn’t have come here to spend the night.”

“But Lt. Allen and I have been spending time together. He’s trying to find who’s committing these crimes. Now that the news broke about his badge, he can’t come and go as he pleases. He needs eyes and ears to keep him informed.”

“For a woman who can’t open herself up long enough to start a relationship, you sure are trusting.”

“With Lt. Allen, it’s different. I know he isn’t the man abducting those women. Just like I knew you weren’t guilty of murder. As long as people are focused on him as a suspect, nobody’s out there looking for the real villain. Only one of the women has been found, and even though she’d been missing for a month, she’d only been dead for a few hours. That means the abductor is keeping them somewhere. Hudson, I know two of the women who were approached. One is a client, one lives in my building. They’re not strangers to me. Neither is Lt. Allen. Too much of my life is rooted in coming and going as I please. These abductions are changing all of that—not just for me, but for everybody.”

Hudson readjusted himself on the hammock, his hand resting against my leg. Heat from his hand seared through the fabric of my pants.

“I think I understand why you’re letting Tex stay at your house, but why’d you come to my place instead of your apartment?” he asked.

I looked down at my hands. “The last of my tenants moved out. The building is empty except for me. Here, well, here I would have felt like you were with me, even if you weren’t.”

Hudson and I had developed a trusting rapport, an easy dependability that hinged around tables and chairs in need of repair. Once my decorating business was on solid footing, I’d repeatedly asked if he wanted to become partners—my way of establishing a more permanent connection. He always declined, and I always felt like he’d given me a present by saying no.

“The building’s empty?”

“Yep.”

He dropped his eyes to my hands and nodded slowly, his lips pursed. I failed at stifling a yawn. “We can talk more tomorrow. You need to get some sleep.” I followed him back inside. “If you need anything, my room is the last one on the left. The bathroom is the first door on the left.”

I waited until his bedroom door closed behind him and carried my bag to the bathroom. I changed into a cotton nightie and splashed cool water on my face. Sleep. Right.

The next morning I woke up disoriented. The living room was flooded with light, showing off the wooden Witco wall hanging above the sofa, the chrome globe lamp that rested on a two-tiered end table, and the brass magazine stand that sat next to the reclining chair. In it were back issues of
Atomic Ranch
magazine and the
Better Homes and Gardens Handyman Guide
from 1957 that I’d given him for Christmas last year.

I knotted a pink cotton robe over my nightgown. According to the starburst clock in the hallway, it was after nine. Under normal conditions, I would have been up for the past three and a half hours. Then again, nothing about the past few days had been normal.

I listened for sounds that would prove I hadn’t dreamt the whole encounter with Hudson and his niece last night. The house was silent. I went straight to the bathroom, did what I needed to do, and went to the kitchen. A pot of coffee sat on the counter, anchoring a handwritten note.
Madison—I took Heather and Nettie to the World Aquarium. Help yourself to anything you want. I’ll be back around four. Had an idea for you. –H.

I poured a cup of coffee and sat in the breakfast nook. Out back, Mortiboy wandered the perimeter of the yard. Rocky ran up to him, then ran away. The wooden fence provided an enclosed area for both of them to explore. I knew Mortiboy had been on the road with Hudson for the past few months. He must have been happy to be back in his environment if he was tolerating Rocky’s attack-sniff-retreat routine.

I finished my coffee, took a quick shower and changed into a geranium red dress. After applying my daily slathering of sunscreen, I secured my hair into a high ponytail, slipped black ballerina flats on my feet, and collected Rocky. Mortiboy seemed unconcerned that we were leaving. I added a note to Hudson that I’d see him later.

It was too late to bother with the pool. Not only would the lanes be overflowing with lap swimmers who had slept in, but the sun was already hot, and there was only so much my sunscreen could do. I wasn’t about to risk skin cancer for a late workout. I’d be back in the pool tomorrow.

Rocky and I headed to Mad for Mod. I unclipped his leash and he went straight to my office. By the time I caught up with him, he was on his dog bed fighting with his rope bone. Snarls and growls came from the floor while I checked my messages.

There was one from Joanie Higa, who ran Joanie Loves Tchotchkes, a local thrift store. She claimed to have acquired a collection of vintage melon, yellow, and aqua Spaghetti String glasses and a matching pitcher with my name on them. The second message was from Richard Goode, the head volunteer who ran programming at the Mummy Theater. He wanted my opinion on the tackiness level of planning a night of kidnapping movies. The fact that he was asking the question told me he already knew the answer.

The third message was from Sgt. Osmond. I called him back first.

“Sergeant, this is Madison Night. Do you have any leads on Cleo Tyler?”

“Ms. Night, that’s not why I called. It’s starting to look like you might have been the last person to talk to Mrs. Tyler, so can you tell me anything else about yesterday morning? Did you ask her to go to the paint store?”

“No, in fact, I don’t know why she was there. We’ve discussed swatches that I took to her, but it’s my job to order the paint and supplies, not hers.”

“Do you do all the work yourself?”

“I do as much as I can, and what I can’t do, I freelance out. I have a network of contractors that I like to work with. Hudson James is on the top of that list.”

At the mention of Hudson’s name, Rocky looked up from his rope bone and yipped. I reached down and tugged the toy out from under his paw and tossed it into the hallway. He charged and retrieved it like a pro.

“Is Mr. James working with you on this job?” Sgt. Osmond asked.

“He will be. He was out of town when I first took the job, so I called around to the other contractors he recommended.”

“Do you have a list of these other contractors?”

“Yes. Why?”

“It seems that after you left her, she drove to the paint store, where she was abducted. We don’t know if she was followed from home or picked out at random in the parking lot. We’re following up on everything she did, everybody she might have interacted with. It’s thin, but we’re looking at it all.”

I glanced at the list of contractors. I’d left messages for most of the men. Emil Lyndy’s name was at the bottom. “Sergeant, I can email this to you if you’d like. There’s only one on the list who I actually spoke to, and he showed up here before I called him. His name is Emil Lyndy.”

“Know where I can find him?”

“I only have a phone number.” I rattled off Lyndy’s digits. Sgt. Osmond thanked me and hung up.

Ever since taking the job with Cleo and Dan Tyler, my studio hours had been limited. Considering what they were paying me, I could have closed my doors to new business and still been financially secure. But the decorating business was a game of feast or famine, and being closed to new business wouldn’t work out well for Mad for Mod in the long term.

I tried to reach Dan Tyler again. This time he answered.

“Hello, Dan? This is Madison Night. Have you heard from Cleo?”

“The police tracked me down this morning. I’m heading back now.”

“I just spoke to the police too. They’re following up on everything they can. They’re going to find her.” I spoke with more confidence than I felt.

“You don’t get it, do you? Those cop friends of yours don’t care what happens to her or to any of those women. They want to protect their image and look good. It’s up to me. By the time they’ll treat her like a missing person, she could be dead.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to mobilize a team to help me find my wife and I’m going to tell that woman on the news what I know about how the Lakewood Police Department operates when it comes to protecting their own.”

“Dan, they’re trying to help.”

He cursed. “Mind your own business, Madison. And consider your services terminated.”