With Vics You Get Eggroll (A Mad for Mod Mystery Book 3) (9 page)

TWELVE

I repeated Dan’s name a few times before accepting that he’d hung up on me. I set the top half of my donut phone back on the receiver, completing the circle, and sat back, staring at the notes on my desk.

Cleo had said that Dan would be out of town for a few days. Now Cleo was missing and Dan was circumventing the police to try to find her. Did his anger toward the police run so deep that he would destroy the reputation of the department to get back at them for what happened to his brother? Or was there something else behind his actions?

Like, did he know more about the abductions than he was letting on?

Try as I might, I couldn’t relax, not completely. Watching the news had become a compulsion—waiting to hear if the police had any leads or, worse, if another woman was missing. I tried not to let it get to me, but everywhere I turned, I was reminded of my isolation. My client had been abducted. My last tenant had been approached by the abductor. My former clients were out of town, and I’d just been fired.

As a single woman in Dallas, I should have been afraid to leave the house alone. Instead I found myself confronting latent feelings about two men. Was it the fear of the abductions that forced me to acknowledge what Hudson and Tex meant to me? Or a greater fear of sitting passively by, letting life happen around me? I was a woman with very few personal connections and that had been fine. Until now. But regardless of which way I went, I couldn’t turn my back on one person in order to have a life with the other. That went against my nature.

What did I really know about the abductions? Not much, but that could change in an instant.

I pulled up the internet news of the abductions and wrote each of the vics’ names on an index card: Linda Gull, Susan Carroll, Kate Morrow, and Cleo Tyler. I wrote the date each woman was reported as missing on the bottom, and then pinned them to the wall on top of the still-unnamed paint swatches. When I was finished, I had a timeline that spanned five weeks.

If something connected these four women, I didn’t know what it was. They varied in ages, races, and economic backgrounds. Cleo and her husband had moved here recently, and Kate, an only child, had been in town visiting her mother. Linda had been passing through on her way to Shreveport to meet up with friends, and Susan had been headed to the airport after a reunion weekend where she and her siblings celebrated their parent’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. The police had confirmed that they were all from out of town. So was there a pattern to the abductions, or was the pattern completely random?

I sat up straighter and remembered Effie. There was no report of her attempted abduction in any of the papers. I wrote “Effie Jones” on an index card and thumbtacked it to the board to the left of the article about Cleo. But Effie didn’t fit. She had Texas plates on her car, and she wasn’t from out of town. Plus, as far as I knew, she was the only person who could give a statement about the attacker.

The attack on Effie had come when Tex was at the press conference. That bit of odd timing had moved suspicion from him, even though her would-be attacker had worn Tex’s name pinned to his shirt. It was a pretty sloppy mistake if someone was trying to set him up.

I leaned back in my chair and considered what that might mean. Did the same person approach Effie as the other women, or was someone taking advantage of the situation? Was her so-called attack a copycat crime?

“What do you think, Rocky? Does anything stand out to you?” I asked. Rocky, tired of his bone, lifted his head and looked at me. I pointed at the pictures on the wall. He cocked his head sideways and then laid it back down on top of his paws.

“If you think of anything, let me know. Lt. Allen is counting on us.”

I stared at the wall again. The abductor clearly knew a thing or two about how the Lakewood Police Department conducted their business. How else would he know how to get Tex’s badge, or know what would pass as a believable uniform, or what to say to get someone to pull over and trust him? But these things were also the flaws in his plan. Why impersonate Tex, a homicide detective, who didn’t wear a uniform? Who didn’t pull people over and hand out traffic violations? Or drive an unmarked police car?

That made me think it was a personal attack against Tex. Using his identity mattered more than the accuracy of the impersonation. That’s why he targeted women from out of town. They wouldn’t know who Tex was. The Lakewood Abductor could operate under relative anonymity while the entire police department was looking for him.

I didn’t like the thought, but the more I tried to reason it through, the more it felt like I was onto something. I needed to bounce my thoughts off of someone. I considered my options and, regretfully, ended up with one person. For the second time in a matter of days, I called Nasty.

“Donna, this is Madison.” I was met by silence. “Thank you for your help with Effie. She was really shaken up, and I don’t think she would have made a statement if you hadn’t gone with her.”

“What do you want?” she asked.

I pushed aside my petty anger at her rudeness. “I’ve been going over what I know about this case. I know you’re not on the force anymore, and I know we’re not exactly friends, but I thought we could put aside our differences to help Lt. Allen.”

“No.”

“What?”

“No. I told you. That life—being a cop and being with Tex—is in my past. I’ve moved on.”

“This isn’t about me, it’s about a man we both know, a man we both care about.”

“You’re enabling him, you know that? You’re allowing him to manipulate you into helping him. You’re putting yourself in danger for no good reason. As long as you’re asking yourself questions, try to answer this one: what is it you get from this situation?”

“Donna, four women have been abducted. One is dead, and three are still missing. Lt. Allen needs our help.”

“No, he needs to help himself. Get any ideas of you and me working like partners out of your head. We’re not Cagney and Lacey.”

And for the second time that day, someone hung up on me.

Shortly after noon, Rocky and I left the studio and drove to the Casa Linda shopping center. I circled the lot twice, looking for Tex’s Jeep. It wasn’t there. Just as I was about to leave, I noticed a long, flat pizza box jutting out of the trash.
Go to Keller’s
was written on the side.

Keller’s Hamburgers was a drive-in burger joint a few miles away. Going to Keller’s was like going back in time. Dressed as I was in a secondhand dress from the early sixties, it seemed fitting. Tex’s Jeep was parked at the end of a row of cars and trucks. A few bikers on motorcycles idled around the front of the restaurant by picnic tables. My Alfa Romeo fit in perfectly. I parked next to Tex, and Rocky and I moved from my car to his.

He looked at Rocky and then at me. “I ordered you a vanilla shake and a burger. Okay?” he said.

“Sure. No fries?”

He turned to the speaker. “Add an extra burger, no bun, and an order of fries.”

“I was kidding.”

He ruffled Rocky’s fur while we waited for the food. Rocky walked from my lap to Tex’s, turned around, and came back to me. He jumped down to the floor and curled up on top of my feet.

When the food was delivered, Tex distributed the burgers and shakes and set the fries between us. He unwrapped the second burger and tore off a piece for Rocky. I covered my lap with napkins and bit into mine. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I stopped three bites in and caught Tex staring at me.

“Did you want me to wait?” I asked.

“Nope.” He unwrapped his burger and caught up to me. We finished our burgers and picked at the fries between sips of our shakes.

“You didn’t go swimming this morning,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“I was there.”

“I forgot. You like to pop up from time to time.”

“No, I was there. In the pool. Six o’clock.”

“You went to Crestwood to swim? Lt. Allen, you surprise me.”

“You were right. Being in the water provides a certain outlet for tension. It’s no shooting range, but it’s something.”

“Is that where you normally go to let off steam?”

He raised an eyebrow. “It’s not my number one choice, but it works. Besides, you had a good point about getting out of the car and changing my scenery. So, what, you had another job this morning?”

“Not exactly.” I suspected Tex was looking for clues as to where I had slept. The memory of spending the night at Hudson’s was still too fragile to talk about. “How’d you sleep?”

“Fine, once I got used to the pink floral comforter.”

“Sorry. Would airplanes and fire engines be better for a big strong boy like you?”

“Maybe.” He grinned. One last slurp of his shake gave evidence that the white Styrofoam cup was empty. He set it in the cup holder and bit off another fry. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“You ever wonder about your life? About all of the decisions that brought you to this place, right now? Do you ever wish you did things differently when your ex showed up?”

Leave it to Tex to ruin a perfectly good vanilla shake and basket of French fries by bringing up my past.

Brad Turlington was the reason I’d left Pennsylvania. While on a romantic getaway at the Poconos, on the top of a black diamond ski slope, in the middle of our torrid love affair, he told me he was married. I’d skied away. Skidded on the ice. Lost control and fell. Tore a couple of ligaments in my knee.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, two years later, he showed up in Dallas. The marriage, the whole confession, had been a lie. He claimed to be ready to come clean about the skeletons in his closet, and when I realized how much trouble he was in, I let him back into my life.

“I should have slammed the door in his face. The whole thing was a manipulation. I spent two years building a life on my own in Dallas. Sure, he hurt me. But if I had one do-over, I wouldn’t have given him the chance to hurt me again.”

“Relationships hurt. That’s reality.”

“You’ve been hurt by love? Mr. Love them and leave them? Who was she?”

He sat back against the seat. “Night, there’s no ‘one who got away’, if that’s what you’re driving at. I just never met the right girl.”

“Either you stopped looking when you were a fourteen-year-old Boy Scout, or you might want to rephrase that sentence and use the word ‘woman’ this time.”

“You think I’m sexist, don’t you?”

“I think you can do with a couple reminders of equality here and there.”

He moved his hands from behind his head to his thighs. “I think that’s my favorite thing about you. You don’t care that I’m a cop. You’re willing to call a spade a spade.”

He turned his head away from me and looked at a passing black Escalade.

“Lieutenant, I don’t think you’re a spade.”

“Oh, yeah? Then what am I?”

I considered the question. “I don’t know what you are.”

“Is that why you gave me a place to stay and are checking in on me twice a day? You’re trying to figure me out?”

“I don’t know about that either.”

He leaned close and I smelled the sweetness of the shake on his breath. “You’re here because you don’t understand what this is,” he said, moving his hand back and forth between us. “Just like me.” He sat back and looked out the window. “I realized last night when I was trying to sleep on your pink sheets that I don’t need to understand it.”

I fought the urge to tell him where I’d slept last night. I didn’t know why I’d wanted to keep it a secret when I thought Hudson was out of town, but now, getting into the details would be plain old messy. Tex didn’t need that kind of drama, not when he was trying to find a killer. And I didn’t need that kind of drama, not when I was finally sorting out my life.

“Dan Tyler fired me this morning,” I said. “I called him to see if there was any news on Cleo and he said I should consider myself terminated.”

“Does he know you know me?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, Night.”

“Don’t be. I’m not going to lie about who I associate with. But speaking of associations…” I bit my lower lip and wondered if maybe I should consider lying when it came to Nasty. “I was looking at the articles about each of the known abducted women and I don’t think the person who approached Effie is the same guy who took the other women. There are too many inconsistencies. Her guy was on foot, but the others had a car. He had a name tag with your name on it. The other guy had a badge. All of the others were from out of state but her car has Texas plates. I think someone took advantage of the situation to scare her, but that’s all.”

“A copycat.”

“Maybe. Effie’s story doesn’t match what we know about the others. She was at the Landing. And she wasn’t abducted. She drove away.”

“The police are following up on her statement.”

“But if her situation was meant to be a distraction, then whatever they’re following up on isn’t going to lead them to the right guy. Any time that’s spent searching for him is time not spent searching for the guy who took the others. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“It’s one theory.”

“Do you have a better one?”

He tore off another piece of hamburger and held it out to Rocky, who moved from my feet to the driver’s side with Tex. “I wish I could figure out the connection. Whatever it is that ties me to these women, or ties these women together. That might give us a clue to where they are.”

“What do you have so far?”

“At first we thought he was impersonating a cop to get women to pull over. Make us look bad while he commits his crimes. I don’t think it was ever about making a mockery of the Lakewood Police Department, but I think it’s about me.”

“What makes you say that?”

He reached under his seat and pulled out a small black wallet. When he flipped it over, I saw his badge. “I thought that was found on the body of Kate Morrow. How do you have it now?”

“It’s another one. I found it in the parking lot by the paint store.”

“That’s where Cleo Tyler was abducted.”

“I know. Seems whoever is behind this is dropping clues to keep me under suspicion.”