A Dangerous Engagement

by Ashley Weaver

  I tried to affect an attitude of equal indifference. “Now what do you propose we do?”

  He moved to the nearest window, looking down. “We could probably jump. Might break a leg.”

  “I can’t. I … I’m expecting a baby.” It was the first time I had said the words aloud, and my voice wobbled as I said them, the desperation coming to the forefront for the first time. I had to escape, not just for me, but for my child.

  It was, perhaps, an indelicate topic of conversation, but I knew very well Leon De Lora was not a delicate man. Nor was there any possibility of me jumping if there was some other means of escape possible.

  He glanced around, looking for some sort of rope, I supposed. One would have thought that there would be any number of such things lying around a warehouse, but the catwalk was bare, seemingly stripped of anything that might prove a hazard to those moving back and forth so high above the warehouse floor.

  Mr. De Lora looked at me, seeming to consider something for a moment, his eyes sweeping over me. “Take off your dress,” he said.

  I stared at him, wondering at first if I had heard him correctly and then wondering just what on earth he meant.

  He watched me, waiting. He was the sort of man who was accustomed to having his orders obeyed, but I was not the sort of woman accustomed to orders. “Why?”

  “We’ll cut your dress into strips and tie them together to make a rope. We can go out the window.”

  I hesitated. Though I had to admit that the plan made sense, I considered it with something like dismay. Repelling down the side of the building on a rope made of stitched-together taffeta did not sound much safer than jumping, but I supposed there was little choice. The fire was still crackling below, the glow of the flames growing brighter, and I knew we were running out of time.

  My sense of modesty made me reluctant to strip off my dress in the presence of a man who was not my husband, but desperate times called for desperate measures. At least I was wearing a slip. Besides, I was certain that Leon De Lora had seen much more provocative displays.

  I reached behind myself and began to unbutton my dress, wishing that I had chosen one that didn’t have buttons up the entire back. The sound of the fire beneath us was a constant reminder that time was of the essence.

  “Here. Let me help.” Before I could say anything, he stepped behind me and, grasping the back of the neckline, gave a quick tug that sent buttons scattering as the dress ripped neatly down the back seam.

  I gasped.

  “Quicker than unbuttoning,” he said.

  I stepped out of the dress and handed it to him.

  Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his knife and began to shred the skirt. I was glad the fabric was of sturdier construction that some of my other gowns. Chiffon would not have been nearly as useful for rope making.

  As he cut the dress, he handed me the strips and I began to tie the pieces end to end, creating what amounted to a rope of decent length.

  It occurred to me as we were working how preposterous this whole thing was. The more I thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed. Were we really going to lower ourselves from a window on a rope made of an evening gown? It sounded like something that would happen in a bad farce.

  But the increasing heat made it clear there wasn’t much of an alternative.

  When we had finished, Mr. De Lora took the improvised rope and tugged on it, testing the strength. “It seems pretty strong to me. I think it will hold.”

  I sincerely hoped that he was right. The idea of plunging to my death was not much more appealing than succumbing to the fire.

  “Stand over here,” he said, motioning me to a spot away from the window. I did as he said, and then he moved to the window and shattered the panes with his elbow in one quick jab. He then pushed out the remaining pieces of glass. I could hear the faint tinkling sound of them shattering on the hard ground below.

  The glass removed, he tied one end of the rope to a heavy metal pipe that moved up the length of the wall. He gave it a few tugs to test the strength, then motioned me forward. “I’ll go down first in case that detective is around,” he said.

  I felt a momentary pang of doubt. I hoped that he would not decide to leave me here once he had reached the ground. But he had helped me this far; I decided that I would have to trust him.

  I moved to the window and he took the makeshift rope, wrapping it around me loosely and then holding it together in front in a demonstration. “Tie it around you like this when you come down. It’ll support you like a rope swing,” he said.

  I had never been on a rope swing, but I supposed I would take his word for it.

  He took the rope back and moved to the ledge. Then he went over it with an agility I had not really expected of him, holding on to the sill.

  He pulled on the rope with one hand, testing its strength once more. When it seemed that it would hold, he gave me a wink, and then he began to lower himself down. I looked over the ledge and watched him descend with the sound of the fire growing in intensity behind me. The warehouse was filled with any number of flammable items, so I imagined everything inside would be destroyed in a short amount of time. Just as Detective Andrews had hoped.

  After what seemed to me like an extremely long time, Mr. De Lora reached the ground. He looked up and waved to me and then disappeared out of sight around the corner of the building.

  I drew the rope back up and then stood there waiting, hoping he would come back. A moment later he returned and waved up at me. “All clear,” he called.

  There was a moment’s hesitation as I realized it was my turn to climb down. Then I took another look behind me. The roar of the blaze and the crackle of the burning warehouse seemed to grow louder with each passing moment. The fire had continued to spread rapidly, consuming everything in its path with a steadily growing fury. Already it was to the place where we had stood near the tires, and I could smell the acrid stench of burning rubber and a chemical odor I thought must be the incinerated cocaine.

  I turned back to the window. Breathing hard, I tied the fabric rope around me as he had instructed and went to the sill and gingerly lowered myself out of it.

  For just a moment, I hovered in the air, suspended between the heat and smoke of the warehouse and the cold night air. Then, hand over hand, I lowered myself down. At last I felt his arms around me and he lowered me the rest of the way.

  I nearly wept with relief as my feet touched the ground, but now was not the time.

  “No sign of Detective Andrews?” I asked.

  His face darkened. “No. I wished there had been.”

  I was glad he had not encountered anyone, for we had had enough murder to last us quite a while.

  “What do we do now?” I asked. “We … we can’t call the police.”

  Whom did one contact when the police were trying to kill one?

  “First, we get out of here.”

  We went along the side of the building quietly and cautiously through the darkness. The moon was obscured by the heavy clouds, so I could barely see Mr. De Lora in front of me, but I could sense him there. Somehow, I was able to follow him through the narrow alleyway. When we were close to the front of the building, he reached back, his hand on my arm, to stop me. We stood for a moment in the darkness, listening. It was an effort for me to control my breathing, and I was certain that, if anyone was about, he would be able to hear me dragging in lungfuls of the fresh night air.

  He looked around the edge, gun at the ready, before motioning for me to follow him.

  There was no sign of Detective Andrews. I supposed now that he had set the building afire he thought that there was no need for him to stay around.

  I looked back into the dark alleyway we had just exited. Smoke was flowing out of the broken window where we had exited the building. All of Mr. Alden’s hard-earned profits were going up in flames. I did hope that he was insured.

  “Mr. De Lora…” I said.

  “Don’t you think you c
an call me Leon now?” he interrupted. “After all, I’ve seen you in your underclothes.”

  I was not a woman inclined to blushing, but I felt a flush creeping over my face at these words. “I think formality might be best,” I replied.

  He laughed. “Whatever you say, Rosie.”

  We began walking back toward his car when suddenly a dark figure appeared.

  I felt Mr. De Lora reaching for the gun in his pocket, when I suddenly recognized the man and caught Mr. De Lora’s arm.

  “Hello, darling,” Milo said, emerging out of the shadows, his eyes flickering from me to Mr. De Lora. “De Lora.”

  “Oh, Milo,” I said, and the words came out in a sob.

  I threw myself into his arms and clung to him, my face pressed tight against his neck.

  “What’s all this?” he asked, his arms moving around me.

  “I thought you might be dead,” I said, my mouth still pressed against him.

  “It’s all right, darling. I’m all right,” he said, holding me tightly.

  I clung to him for a moment longer, relishing the solid warmth of him against me.

  I took in everything: the fabric of his suit, the scent of his skin, the familiar fragrance of his aftershave that seemed so much more precious now after thinking I would never smell it again.

  I was shaking and dizzy and half afraid to let him go. I just stood there, leaning against him, taking comfort in the reality of his arms around me. After a moment, I marshalled my composure and I pulled back from him, wiping my eyes. Now that I knew he was alive, I remembered that I should be angry with him.

  “Where have you been?” I demanded.

  “It’s a long story. But rest assured, darling, I was in danger of my life.”

  I didn’t know if he was joking, but now that I looked at him, I saw that he was unshaven, the dark shadow of a day’s worth of whiskers on his normally smooth face, and there was an uncharacteristic glimmer of tiredness in his eyes.

  He was looking me over as I studied him, and it was then I remembered that I had shed my gown in order to escape the warehouse.

  He took in my state of undress with perfect equilibrium. “What’s happened to your clothes, Amory?”

  The night was cool, and I was standing there in my slip. I had neither the time nor the inclination to answer his silly questions.

  “Give me your jacket,” I said crossly.

  He took it off and held it up so I could slip my arms into it. I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to soak up his warmth.

  “Detective Andrews is the killer,” I said. “He set the warehouse on fire.”

  “Yes, I know. He was here to meet another man, I believe. An employee of Frankie Earl’s by the name of Tiny Davis, who is even now tied up behind the business office. We might want to move him soon in case the fire spreads.”

  I stared at him. Illogically, the first question that came to my mind was why all the men in Frankie Earl’s employ seemed to possess strange given names.

  “What…” I started, but I couldn’t seem to find the words. Everything was a muddle at the moment, and I was still trying to make sense of it all.

  “We’d better go back to my place,” Mr. De Lora said. “It’ll be safe there. You got a car here, Ames?”

  “In a manner of speaking. Tiny Davis has a Cadillac parked near the water. I’m afraid I caught him off guard before he could leave. The keys are still in it.”

  Mr. De Lora gave a little nod. “All right. You take Amory in that car. I’ll go get our friend and bring him with me.”

  “I think I should bring Amory back to the Aldens’ home before we speak with Davis,” Milo said.

  “No,” I replied, outraged at the idea that he would try to exclude me now. “I’m coming with you, so you may as well not waste time arguing about it.”

  Mr. De Lora looked at Milo. “You heard her, Ames. Let’s get going.”

  27

  “NOW,” I SAID, when we had settled into the strange black car and pulled out onto the street, “tell me what’s been going on.”

  Everything had been happening so fast, I was at a loss as to how to make sense of it all. Milo, however, seemed to have a firm grasp on the big picture as he maneuvered the car out of the warehouse grounds and back onto the relative safety of the roads.

  “As you know, I went with De Lora last night to look into some things for the nightclub. That was all just as I had said. But then we began talking about the attempted robberies at the warehouse, and it occurred to me that, though Mr. Alden seemed to be a legitimate businessman, it was quite possible that there was something going on there without his knowledge. With Grant Palmer involved, I figured pretty quickly that it must be drugs.”

  “Yes, Mr. De Lora told me as much,” I admitted. “But how did you know?”

  “For one thing, it was fairly apparent to me that he was Miss Petrie’s supplier.”

  “You knew she was taking drugs?”

  “I thought it obvious. I think Tom knows, too, or at least suspects. He mentioned to me that he doesn’t like Tabitha spending so much time with Jemma.”

  That was likely why Jemma was no great admirer of Tom, then.

  “You didn’t think to mention that to me?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Many people take drugs. I wasn’t sure it was relevant until I began to put all the pieces together.”

  “Go on,” I said, fighting down my annoyance.

  “Alas, Mr. Palmer was trying to play too many hands at once, and he started to get his cards mixed up. He was working for De Lora, and that was how he had introduced Mr. Alden into the nightclub scheme. Then, somewhere along the line, he began to work for Frankie Earl. I think he knew that Mr. Alden would never agree to smuggling drugs, and so he worked it out surreptitiously. The drugs were moved in and out inside the tires, and no one knew. At least for a while.

  “I think Mr. Alden was beginning to suspect that something was amiss, however, especially after he heard that Palmer had come to the warehouse and tried to gain entry. The smugglers realized that they were going to need to try to get their drugs out of the warehouse before Mr. Alden looked too closely, hence the attempted break-ins. They were scouting to find the best way in so they could bring their own trucks and load up the drug-filled tires late at night.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” I asked.

  “I didn’t have time. I came to the warehouse early this morning to see if I could talk to Mr. Brown, the warehouse manager, or even one of the guards, but instead I encountered Tiny Davis, the gentleman who was driving this car.”

  “And who is he?” I asked, more confused than ever. “You said he works for Frankie Earl?”

  “Yes. Apparently, there was another surveillance going on that I walked into. My being here was not at all part of the plan, so he brought me at gunpoint back to see his employer.”

  I felt a surge of horror go through me at this information. So Milo had been in danger, after all. I had known that something wasn’t right. I had felt it.

  “Unfortunately, his boss wasn’t there, and they didn’t want to shoot me without permission, so he and several of his colleagues were forced to keep me under guard for the remainder of the day. After a while, I think I began to grow on them and we started a friendly game of cards.”

  I exhaled a breath that was somewhere between aghast and exasperated. Leave it to Milo to win over a group of vicious killers.

  “I told them that I was associated with Mr. De Lora but that I was not at all opposed to throwing in my lot with them in exchange for compensation.”

  “And so they accepted you, just like that?” I asked, still wondering how he had been able to manage it.

  “They’re not the wiliest of criminals,” Milo said easily. “They’re the muscle of the organization, after all, not the brains. Mr. Davis let me drive with him here. When we got out of the car and he wasn’t looking, I managed to hit him over the head and then tie him up with some rope that was lying abou
t. I must say, I was rather resourceful about it all.”

  I shook my head, trying to imagine Milo engaged in such a skirmish.

  “You might have been killed in the struggle,” I said, queasy at the thought.

  “But I wasn’t.”

  I sighed, still confused. “But where does Grant Palmer’s murder fit into all of this? And why did Detective Andrews try to kill me tonight?”

  “Frankie Earl has been paying off Andrews in order to keep the police from looking in his direction. They didn’t count on Grant Palmer deciding to become a police informant, however.”

  I stared at him. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “I told you: Palmer was trying to play too many hands at once. He thought he could win a bit of extra favor for himself by giving the police information about what was going on inside Frankie Earl’s smuggling operation.”

  I remembered suddenly what Mr. Elliot had told me, how Grant Palmer had told him he might want to try the side of law and order. This was the tightrope he had been walking, one between his underworld life and a life on the right side of the law.

  “Unfortunately for Mr. Palmer, he didn’t realize that Frankie Earl had an inside man on the police force. And when he decided to reveal that the drugs were about to be moved, Andrews had to silence him before they were all found out.”

  “But how did he know Mr. Palmer was going to reveal that?”

  “That’s something I haven’t quite worked out. Tom said that Mr. Palmer wanted to tell him something the night he was killed. Perhaps he wanted Tom’s advice. Whatever the case, I think Andrews must have followed him from Frankie Earl’s establishment and shot him on the doorstep before Palmer could potentially give something away.”

  I couldn’t believe it. It was all so fantastically horrible.

  “And then he came back later, to investigate the crime,” I said. “How diabolical.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” Milo agreed.

  “So Detective Andrews was the man Mr. Davis was supposed to meet at the warehouse tonight?”